Daily Market Commentary

With the help from a falling dollar, stocks and almost every other commodity were up on Friday. The Dow gained 169-points, which was actually quite a bit off the highs, while the Nasdaq, small caps, bonds, gold, crude oil, wheat, you name it, were all up on Friday.

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Stocks were mixed on Thursday with the Dow falling 117-points, but we may have to cut it some slack after the 400-point rally it had (from the day's low to high) after the FOMC meeting on Wednesday. The Nasdaq was up and small caps were flat.

The first two days of the NCAA basketball tournament are my favorite non-holiday days of the year, and I treat them like holidays. After watching 12 straight hours of games - with one eye on the market - it's late and I ...

Stocks opened lower and investors were hunkering down expecting the worst before the FOMC policy statement was released. Upon the announcement, a triple digit loss in the Dow turned into a 227-point gain. After the announcement, Janet Yellen held a press conference and pushed all of the right buttons as stocks held onto those gains into the close.

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Once again we saw a wildly mixed bag for stocks on Tuesday. The Dow lost a stiff 128-points (-0.7%) on the day but small caps and the Nasdaq were each up about 0.2%, and the other indices were somewhere in between the two. Oil was down again breaking to new lows and concerns about the recent strength in the dollar was likely the reason for the disparity in stocks.

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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

If you like a good come-back story, this one started on Friday - despite the 145-point decline - when the bulls finally started to do some buying in late afternoon trading when the Dow was down about 300-points. The come-back was completed on Monday as the Dow rocketed to a 228-point gain completely erasing last week's losses. The difference between a ball game and the market is, the game doesn't end for the market. It continues ...