ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
The stock market responded favorably to Thursday evening’s earnings report from Lender Processing Services, Inc (LPS) by sending the stock up 5%. Buying volume was also strong at 3.3 million shares, almost doubling the 1.7M 3-month average. *Chart created using TeleChart: I suspect a material portion of this buying came from disappointed shorts who were … Read more
The market has essentially maintained a holding pattern while awaiting the results of next week’s trifecta of news: the elections, the Federal Reserve’s announcement on quantitative easing, and the next employment report. So I was quite surprised to realize that for almost three weeks my favorite technical indicator, T2108, has been dropping. On Thursday, this … Read more
Bloomberg summarized the latest missive from Bill Gross in a piece called “Fed Easing to Signify End of Bull Market, Gross Says.” Gross called an end to the 30-year bull market in bonds thanks to the the Federal Reserve’s planned second round of quantitative easing. I decided to read Gross in his own words, and … Read more
Pound Set for Pain as Cameron Cuts Send King to Printing Press – Bloomberg History suggests sterling’s losses will be sustained while Osborne implements cuts that are bigger than those announced by Geoffrey Howe when he was Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor in 1981, according to UBS. The pound lost 20 percent against the dollar that year … Read more
I continue to keep tabs on the performance of non-residential (commercial) real estate through the eyes of the companies that service this industry. Unlike previous quarters, earnings reports are a bit more mixed about the condition and outlook for non-residential real estate. Current conditions remain poor, but companies are now straining to see some light … Read more
Time for a little fun with gold. As a child of the 1980s, I took particular interest in a fun October 13, 2010, Bloomberg interview with A-Team star Mr. T., the celebrity pitchman for Gold Promise. Gold Promise is a service run by Cash America International, Inc. (CSH) that allows people to sell their gold … Read more
Kass: More on Screwflation – TheStreet …to the extent that quantitative easing helps increase asset prices, by definition and in fact, this also means that it increases the price of commodities and other inputs as well. (It's already happened again.) Shouldn't the benefit of the wealth effect be offset by an expense effect (not to … Read more
On Tuesday morning the Bank of Canada decided to leave its overnight interest rate unchanged at 1.0% and confirmed the caution expressed by Governor Mark Carney on CNBC almost a month ago. The concluding paragraph in the statement on monetary policy summarizes the Bank’s concern about current economic conditions: “At this time of transition in … Read more
Prices soared for solar stocks in September. In October, volume has soared…but prices have swung sharply downward after a very strong start to the month. In most cases, solar stocks have lost all their gains for the month and then some. This trading action is creating buying opportunities, especially where uptrends and/or critical technical support … Read more
Spain's Solar Deals on Edge of Bankruptcy as Subsidies Founder – Bloomberg …more than 50,000 other Spanish solar entrepreneurs face financial disaster as the policy makers contemplate cutting the price guarantees that attracted their investment in the first place…by failing to control the program’s cost, Zapatero saddled Spain with at least 126 billion euros of … Read more