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 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 Bearish engulfing patterns flag potential tops at the end of uptrends. They represent the potential exhaustion of buying power as price first opens above the previous day’s high and then closes below the previous day’s close. Thus, the latest round of bearish engulfing patterns in major indices and major stocks should be … 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
Stock Market Commentary The U.S. stock market hardly reflected last week’s action-packed news. China scrambled to address a weakening economy with a massive stimulus program with news rolling nearly all week. In Japan, voters elected a Prime Minister who favors a stronger currency in the Japanese yen (FXY). Capping the anti-climactic feeling in U.S. stocks, … 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 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
Stock Market Commentary This year’s Jackson Hole confab hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve delivered for financial markets. In his prepared speech, Fed Chair Jerome Powell issued an historic and classic sound bite for all of the history of monetary policy (emphasis mine): “The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The stock market’s V-shaped recovery finished reversing most of the losses from the August calamity. Small caps are once again the laggards. During this recovery the market swung from recessions fears to recession relief. The prospects for interest rate cuts no longer seemed to matter on either side of the V-shape. The … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Last week started with a calamity and ended with a restless calm. Critical trendlines held as support as buyers and bulls ground their way to a near full reversal of Monday’s loss. Ironically, the market even found relief in a “better than expected” weekly unemployment claims report. Claims fell 17,000 from the … Read more