ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
It is easy to forget that the months going into the COVID-19 pandemic were filled with fears of a recession. In response to mounting economic and political pressures, the Federal Reserve, led by Jerome Powell, reversed course on the Fed’s 3-year effort to slowly normalize monetary policy with what he called a “mid-cycle” rate adjustment. … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Good employment news came in the form of the May jobs report. The unemployment rate stayed flat at 3.6% while the U.S. economy added 390,000 jobs. Both the number of unemployed and the unemployment rate are essentially back to the pre-pandemic levels of February, 2020. The labor force participation rate remains 1.1% … Read more
Almost seven years ago, I developed the “200DMA Signal” to provide a relative measure of major bottoms for the S&P 500 (SPY). The 200-day moving average (DMA) is a long-term measure of a price trend, so it provides a robust assessment of prevailing trends. The 200DMA Signal triggers when the S&P 500’s 200DMA suffers its … Read more
Stock Market Commentary After 8 weeks of downward selling pressure, it is hard to pivot thinking on the stock market. Yet, the technical situation requires just such a switch. While the first oversold dip of May was unconvincing, I did flip (cautiously) bullish after the stock market closed oversold for the first time in 519 … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The Federal Reserve released the minutes from its May policy meeting. While reporting on the minutes suggest the content contained nothing new, the stock market found rally material anyway. Perhaps it was a relief rally from the fallout in social media stocks. The broad-based buying pushed the stock market out of a … Read more