ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Stock Market Commentary: What was resistance for over two months is slowly becoming support for the stock market. The bullish trading action of the last week created an important breakout that confirmed the bottoming action from the previous week’s bullish engulfing pattern. While the stock market may continue to chase its tail before fighting its … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary In my last Housing Market Review, I called the housing slowdown a “reality check.” That reality is settling into all corners of the market. With mortgage rates resuming their surge over the past two months, the go-forward picture has dimmed further for the housing market. It seems likely the housing … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Pricing pressures are apparently NOT easing just yet. The August CPI report turned “peak Fed” into “fear the Fed” all over again. Instead of falling, core inflation (CPI excluding food and energy) increased a whopping 0.6% month-over-month. This surge pushed the 12-month core inflation rate up from July’s 5.9% to August’s 6.3%. … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary A potential peaking in mortgage rates may be the only good thing to say about today’s housing market. Sales continue to slide, input costs remain high, affordability continues to decline, and builder sentiment sinks lower and lower. The reports from August tell a consistent story of a steepening housing downturn. … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Jerome Powell, and the Federal Reserve, remained resolute with the anti-inflation rhetoric. The stock market hated it. Slowing growth, recession fears, and hopes for “peak inflation” are still not producing the result Wall Street wants: a Federal Reserve backing down from monetary tightening, also known as “the pivot.” The bears seized the … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary Talk of an imminent recession has almost reached a feverish pitch. Accordingly, it is easy to find fears and expectations for an imminent housing crash. The crash watch is morbid as it relies on desperate home owners falling behind on mortgage payments and/or burdened by sinking equity to exit the … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Get used to it. The economy continues to unfold in unexpected ways. An exceptionally strong July jobs report threw some cold water on the breathless expectations on Wall Street for a recession. As one journalist commented on Marketplace, today’s economic context is a strange one with so many talking about a recession … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The stock market overcame a serious setback with an impressive rebound. The rally started before Jay Powell announced the Federal Reserve’s latest decision on monetary policy and pushed higher afterward. The market seemed determine to launch as the opening gap up immediately erased the previous day’s loss. Buyers never looked back and … Read more
“…on the consumer side of our business, we’re seeing an increase in bad debt to slightly higher than pre-pandemic levels as well as extended cash collection cycles.” AT&T, Inc. (T) CEO John Stankey on Q2 2022 Results – Earnings Call Transcript (Seeking Alpha) This observation caught some attention because it sounds like the early warning … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The synchronized breakout looked impressive, but it already hit a serious setback. Friday’s downbeat day was relatively mild on a percentage loss basis, but the context was important. The economic setback came from the July update for the S&P Global Flash US PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index™) Composite Output Index. The headline says … Read more