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: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard did his best to dissuade financial markets from optimistic interpretations of recent softish inflation reports. The press release summarizing recent remarks was enough to send chills in the Fed pause/plateau/pivot theorists: “the policy rate is not yet in a zone that may be … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: I continue to underestimate just how much these bear market rallies price in misplaced optimism over monetary policy from the Fed. Although Chair Jerome Powell remained overall consistent with the Fed’s hawkish, inflation-fighting message, the stock market plunged after an initial post-release surge. Accordingly, the latest bear market breakthrough came to an … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: What was resistance for over two months is slowly becoming support for the stock market. The bullish trading action of the last week created an important breakout that confirmed the bottoming action from the previous week’s bullish engulfing pattern. While the stock market may continue to chase its tail before fighting its … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: A month ago, a CPI Shocker brought a bear market rally to an abrupt end and created an historically bad September. Today’s CPI Shocker, another inflation reading that came in hotter than expected (imagine that), generated a completely different, and bullish, response. The stock market gapped down at the open and buyers … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Extreme trading behavior finally appeared right after I insisted the stock market looked uninteresting despite dropping into oversold conditions. Oversold conditions did a stretch toward the year’s lows and created enough concern to finally send the volatility index soaring. Looming over the trading action all day was a collapse in the British … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The confluence of market-moving news the last two days of the week resolved into a stock market looking incrementally healthier. A synchronized breakout above resistance at respective 50-day moving averages (DMAs) flipped the script on the negative sentiment that dominated trading going into last week. While weakness in the U.S. dollar from … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Even sellers in a bear market exhaust themselves at some point. That point happened to coincide with the latest product announcements from Apple Inc (AAPL). So once again, AAPL finds itself sitting right at the focal point of an important market juncture. Across the major indices, the day’s relief rally generated a … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: And then there was just one. The S&P 500 (SPY) is once again the lone index of three that still trades just outside the clutches of the bear. The signs were flashing red last week as the bear market looked like it warmed right back up. The technicals of market breadth combined … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The stock market threw a big fakeout, the biggest I have seen in a long time. Just yesterday, a synchronized failure at key resistance levels from the major indices combined with a drop from overbought conditions to convince me to get (cautiously) bearish on the stock market. The read on July CPI … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The stock market took one more day to get resolution on the technical signals flashing from market breadth. A drop from overbought conditions triggered a bearish market signal. Failures at important resistance from the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, and IWM each reinforced the bearish signal. However, the relatively mild trading action and … Read more