Today is flip-flop day. I’m not talking about shoes you’d wear to the beach, I’m talking about the day when the front month of the S&P futures contract moves from December to March. Any of you who are players in the futures market on a day-to-day basis know that on flip-flop day, there’s a lot [...]

Folks, we got some moderately good news on the jobs front this morning. For the week ending October 29, unemployment claims dropped to a seasonally adjusted 397,000, the lowest in more than a month. It’s a modest improvement of 9,000 from the week prior and still alarmingly high, but psychologically, coming in under that 400,000 [...]

Folks, as I’m sure you’ve seen by now, we are in the midst of a power move. The markets opened with a bang this morning, and early in the session it’s shaping up like it could be one of those days where we close 500 points higher in the Dow. I’m calling this a melt-up [...]

Folks, we’re coming up on the end of what has been an exceptionally strong month. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen tremendous moves in equities—the Dow shot up more than 9%, the NASDAQ more than 11% and the S&P more than 10%. After a run like that, we want to see the market stop [...]

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 [...]

Folks, looking at the market today, I see some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first? Let’s start with the bad news—that way, we can end on a positive note going into the weekend. Sound ok? The Bad News: European Debt Crisis This debt problem in Europe continues to be an [...]

Folks, first it was Greece, now it’s Italy. More bad news about debt problems in the Eurozone caused the market to open down about 1% across the board this morning. I’ve been talking for a while about how the flow of funds from Europe affects U.S. equity markets.  European fund managers get news like this [...]

Folks, around the time I was graduating high school—back during those dark days of Jimmy Carter—the 10-year had consistently been sitting up above 8%. It even spiked to over 15% at one point. Being a kid, I thought that was the norm. But it wasn’t. It was an aberration to the upside. I bring this [...]

Folks, this is a big week. We’ve got the end of the quarter, the end of the half-year and the end of the month all coming in this week. This is when we see strategies get scrutinized. Be cognizant of that trade-plus-three (T+3), the delayed delivery date for stock and bond transactions as fund and [...]