Folks, the market looks like it might be in a bit of trouble today. I warned you earlier this week about end-of-month activity that would come into play—portfolio managers start playing with their positions and putting up window dressing to approve the appearance of their holdings. At the same time, Europe is still hanging on [...]
Folks, about 10 years ago I met a guy who was getting into the futures market. He had a small account, around $5,000, and he would trade one or two S&P contracts at a time. He’d lose it, come back with another $5,000, lose it again. Finally I said to him, “Leonard, I’m tired of [...]
Folks, in addition to being T+3 settlement day, it’s also the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. Things will probably slow down later in the day as Jewish traders on the East Coast leave early to celebrate the high holiday. Expect a flurry of activity early and then a slowdown toward the end of the session. All [...]
Folks, as I mentioned yesterday, the end of the month and the end of the quarter can be tricky times. There is a lot of activity going off this week—much more so than normal—which happens to coincide with a market that, in my mind, is still underinvested. All that scared money on the sidelines needs [...]
Folks, today is the first day of both the last week of the month and the last week of the 3rd quarter. In addition to the normal end-of-month activity, a great deal of OTC options and listed options activity comes due and goes off on Friday—it’s almost like a second expiration. The action and volatility [...]
In the decades that followed World War II, Keynesian theory was the widely accepted economic tenet of the day. As such, it was believed that recession and inflation could not occur simultaneously—it simply didn’t make sense. But in the 1970s, during the dark days of Jimmy Carter, economic growth stalled and inflation skyrocketed. The world [...]
Folks, as I write this, the yield on the 10-year is 1.7%, and the reason is because there is a ton of confusion out there in the marketplace. So much, in fact, that people are willing to go into a net-negative interest rate situation (at least for the short term) because of the uncertainty with [...]
Well, folks, yesterday we got a one-two punch. First, my fellow Chicagoan went in front of the United Nations and, in my opinion, missed a tremendous opportunity to voice opposition to Palestinian UN membership. His weakness and lack of confidence permeated the financial world, especially in Europe, where the selloff began to escalate. Then, there [...]