Uncategorized

It's been a "buy the dip" market for some time now, and this past week was no exception. Friday's market activity saw significant buying interest in the last half hour of trading, which cut the broader market's overall intra-day losses by half. Mondays have been largely positive for months, so that almost certainly played a role in that end-of-day rally too.

But no one really knows how long that formula is going to work. We've seen a lot of volatility of late, which shows there's ...

For awhile it looked like today's action would give back most of yesterday's gains, but in the last half hour of trade stocks rallied back to erase a large portion of their intra-day losses.

The unemployment picture was a positive as anticipated, but oil once again tempered any enthusiasm for stocks. The February nonfarm payrolls was up 192,000, while private payrolls increased by 222,000. Both were better than anticipated and even the prior months data was adjusted upward. The unemployment ...

The one thing that I've been fairly sure about the last couple of weeks (with respect to the market) is volatility. We've once again walked up to the brink of rolling over this market, only to shoot back higher again on breadth and volume. It really feels like a trap is being set, but I'm not sure whether it's a bull or bear trap. I suspect the latter, but that's been a losing bet for months.

I suppose the biggest development of the day was the report that Gaddafi accepted a peace ...

It almost seems a given at this point that oil will continue its march higher in the face of unrest across the Middle East and North Africa. And today was no exception as oil managed to hit a fresh two-year closing high.

But the market did manage to post some modest gains in spite of the upward pressure on oil. And we might have had bigger gains if wasn't for a report that Libyan fighter jets fired on the oil terminal city of Masra El Brega. Those kind of headlines are only going ...

Since it was the 1st of the month, it shouldn't have been a surprise that the market gapped higher to begin the trading day. That's been fairly typical action for some time. What wasn't typical was the selling pressure that came after the early run higher.

Oil jitters continue to play a role in market activity as geopolitical uncertainty surrounding the Middle East and North Africa continue. In fact, oil prices moved higher by 2.7% to settle at $99.63 per barrel, which was a two-year ...