ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Introduction The U.S. housing market follows a seasonal pattern. The spring selling season typically represents the year’s peak of activity in the housing market. During this time, households try to settle into a new home before summer travel or well ahead of the Fall start to the next school year. Like retailers who eagerly anticipate … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in December, 2024? Suddenly, the housing market is mired in a broken narrative after a brief drop in bond yields created a (fake) boost in November. The weakness showed up in stubbornly high mortgage rates and the dour commentary from earnings reports. The data … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Inflation was the big story last week. I covered the details in “Bonds Try to Weigh on A Market Trying Harder to Look Past Stabilizing Inflation“. The stock market had a curiously mixed reaction that highlighted an on-going bearish divergence for the month of December. A market breadth breakdown contradicted impressive strength … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in November, 2024? October’s reckoning transformed into a rebound with a boost from a sharp drop in long-term interest rates. The partial recovery came just in time for the seasonal strength in the stocks of home builders. The housing data for October showed mixed … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Fades were on display, especially on Thursday, as the stock market showed signs of exhaustion. Bad news in and for the semiconductor industry seemed to motivate sellers. For example, earnings for Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta Platforms (META) seemed to release some steam on hyped expectations for the AI chips both companies will … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in October, 2024? A reckoning that I anticipated finally came in the form of sharply lower prices for the shares of home builders. After resisting rising mortgage rates for a month, the stock market lost its appetite. Earnings have brought a dose of reality … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Another week, another tease for bears. A fade from resistance joined market breadth in flagging bearish signals for the stock market. Yet, bears are hard-pressed to find a good risk/reward entry, especially considering the on-going uptrends for 2024. The latest confounder for bears has been the market’s general ability to ignore rising … Read more
Stock Market Commentary October is the third of the stock market’s three most dangerous months. October, 2024 started with a convergence of bad news tailor-made to fulfill October’s seasonal destiny: intensifying war and geo-political tensions, two intense hurricanes, the looming contentiousness of the U.S. presidential election, another failure from the overbought threshold (bearish according to … Read more
Stock Market Commentary A strong September jobs report woke up the stock market from lethargic trading. The numbers handily beat expectations and reset expectations for future rate cuts and economic growth. Surprisingly, the good news was not bad news; the market has typically been antsy about getting lower interest rates. Instead of fearing a longer … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in September, 2024? Existing home sales fell into a deeper downturn while new home sales maintained an uptrend from recent troughs. Rate cuts are helping to bottom out sentiment for builders. However, great anticipation of a rate cut from the Federal Reserve gave way … Read more