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 The stock market continued its inflation celebration last week with a surge on Monday. The buying momentum abated from there as the holiday-shortened week rolled into Thanksgiving and then Black Friday. Even though NVIDIA (NVDA) stole the earnings spotlight for the week, the U.S.’s most storied day of shopping set the stage … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Downtrends are over. Bullish breakouts abound. Sellers got one chance last week to try to keep the cork in the bottle of the oversold bounce, but they failed. The stock market insisted on pushing right through. With little time to rest, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ ended the week with major … Read more
Stock Market Commentary A bear market intrusion upset the dynamics of this oversold period. The NASDAQ is back in bear market territory. Both the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 broke down below their respective 200-day moving averages (DMAs) (the blue line in the charts below) and entered “correction” territory which is 10% below the 52-week … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The economist “consensus” expectations for September job growth missed the mark by a mile, 336,000 actual versus 170,000 projected. These big misses represent the on-going struggles of conventional economics to understand the dynamics of today’s post-pandemic economy. Initially, the good jobs news frightened financial markets which think of good news as bad … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The last quarter of the year and the third of the stock market’s most dangerous months started off with a swirl of signals. Each of the three major indices exhibited its own behavior. Small cap stocks plunged and uncorked oversold trading conditions. The S&P 500 clung to flatline. The NASDAQ happily shot … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The sentiment shifts following the bounce from oversold conditions swung from bullish and encouraging to tantalizing and disappointing. The stock market has a precarious setup going into a likely October swoon. The prospects for the current oversold bounce to prevent the October swoon hinge on a swirl of technical signs and fundamental … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Get used to the sentiment shifts. One day the stock market went oversold and over hard. The next day, an oversold bounce shows signs of life for stocks. In particular a classic bottoming signal came in the form of the “hammer” candlestick. Together, the bounce from oversold territory and the bottoming hammer … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The Federal Reserve helped unlock the stalemate in pricing action that stalled the bearish divergence tugging the market toward oversold trading conditions. Fed Chair Jerome Powell once again told financial markets the Fed remains as hawkish as ever. Expectations contracted for rate cuts next year, interest rates soared, and stocks plunged. While … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Jackson Hole did not provide the market moving spark that I expected. Instead, soft economic news delivered the decisive interpretation of future monetary policy required to provide a fresh catalyst for stocks. The bullish spark caught me flat-footed as I was leaning into imminent oversold trading conditions. Fortunately, the sentiment shift was … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Stocks stumbled their way through a week fraught with hopes and fears for Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole. With looming oversold conditions, the most significant technical event occurred with a bearish engulfing right under important resistance levels for both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. The relief buying that … Read more