ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in May, 2025? Tariff pressures and economic chaos subsided, yet the stocks of home builders did not benefit as spring failed to deliver sufficient demand to meet soaring inventories. Mortgage rates trended higher again and home prices continued higher. While new home sales reached … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The stock market experienced a hiccup in an otherwise strong post-oversold bounce. The Q1 GDP report revealed a small contraction that surprisingly caught the market off guard. However, this contraction was driven primarily by a surge in imports as businesses rushed to get ahead of anticipated tariffs. I assume a lot of … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in April, 2025? Macro-economic headlines and conditions dominated the environment with tariff pressures and chaos at the center. The economic uncertainty cascading from the burden of tariff policy permeated results from homebuilder and consumer sentiment, housing starts, and existing home sales. New home sales … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in March, 2025? The bear market deepened for housing related stocks as they fell off the edge of a deeper malaise. Growing economic warfare between the U.S. and the world and the resulting chaos is adding to housing woes along with the usual culprit … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in February, 2025? The bear market that scarred the landscape for builders returned. After January’s bear market, relief, the bear market is back and more deeply entrenched. The stocks and the housing data are even on the edge of a deeper malaise. On-going declines … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The stock market looked ready to follow through on leaving its troubles behind. The S&P 500 even made a new all-time high. Everything seemed to fall apart on Friday. The final release of consumer expectations as measured by the University Michigan confirmed earlier preliminary numbers: inflation expectations soared and consumer sentiment tanked. … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The week opened with market breadth dropping to within five percentage points of the oversold threshold. This was the closest encounter with oversold since late October, 2023. The stock market never looked back from there. A favorable mid-week inflation report helped propel the stock market with the assistance of declining long-term bond … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The dust is settling ever so slightly on the stock market’s post-Fed plunge. The stock market shifted from euphoria to oversold on a day that woke up everyone to a potentially new market reality. I say “potentially” because all year the market has been hit with bearish catalysts and quickly bounced back … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Imagine that. Key support holds firm across the major indices. A telling post-election reversal turned into proof positive that unrelenting bulls remain all-in for the stock market. Not even a further escalation in World War 3 brought pause to the rebounds off support (Russia fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile into Ukraine and … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The stock market has a natural law of “physics.” Overly enthusiastic trading, whether up or down, eventually meets an opposite and sometimes equal force. This natural instability of extremes forms a basis of my market breadth trading rules. The enthusiastic post-election surge exhausted buyers enough to create a post-election reversal. Moreover, my … Read more