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 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 In announcing the official end of monetary tightening, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell mentioned some form of the word “recalibration” nine times from his introductory statement to the Q&A portion of the press conference. Specifically, “….it’s a process of recalibrating our policy stance away from where we had it a year ago, … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The stock market poetically swung from the depths of despair with a seasonal September drawdown to a sharp rebound in giddy anticipation of rate cuts from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. The highly anticipated meeting has the potential to set the market’s tone for the remainder of the year. If Chair Jerome … Read more
Stock Market Commentary At the beginning of August, you might have looked uninformed predicting that the S&P 500 would end up printing its 4th straight monthly gain. At its lows, the index wiped out gains from the previous two months and almost reversed May as well. Now, the index hovers just below its all-time high … Read more
Just over two months ago, I aggressively bought ahead of an official trigger of the 20% rule for buying iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ). At the time, I explained my decision with three key reasons: I was also well aware that buying early subjected me to additional risks for the trading rule. Thus, I insisted … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Welcome to the start of the stock market’s three most dangerous months of the year. A weak jobs report for July helped to send market sentiment into a sharp reversal. The bad economic news suddenly turned the prospect of rate cuts into something to fear. These rate cut fears spun the market … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Bears still look ready to bow out, but they still have their paws firmly planted on high-tech stocks, especially semiconductors. The market rotations out of tech are nudging enough stocks higher, especially small caps, to rechallenge the threshold defining overbought conditions for market breadth. The stark divergence in stocks greatly reduces the … Read more
Question. When an analyst lowers the price target on a stock to a level still substantially higher than the current price, what do you expect to happen? What if that price target comes with a downgrade from buy to neutral? If you answered lower, you win a prize… a discounted price on homebuilder stocks. A … Read more
Stock Market Commentary A plunge in market breadth on Wednesday made me expect a more bearish take on the markets for my next blog post. A sharp rebound led by strong earnings from various retail companies, quickly changed the narrative from a continued NVDA hangover to a bullish divergence and then a bullish setup. Friday’s … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The simple and quiet breakout for the stock market found follow-through last week. Both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ hit fresh all-time highs during the week. The April CPI (consumer price index) report paved the way on Wednesday’s all-time highs. A softer than “expected” number revived hopes for a rate cut … Read more