How to Ride the Market’s “Great Risk Rollercoaster”
Another week with a wild start… and a weak finish, down about 1% for the day. This market is trading in an extremely tight range and has been for a looong time now. It’s a market desperate for a catalyst just isn’t finding any - not in data, not in news, not in Tweets. In…
The Market Is Stuck in a Volatility Box
After getting knocked down this morning stocks began to creep up slightly in the hour or so before the close, but don’t read too much into that. This market is desperate for two things - a catalyst and some clarity. Trouble is, there’s not much of either right now. The market just can’t get a…
Markets Are Holding Up… But Mega-Caps Are Cracking
You know how it goes - markets get shaky but one or more trillion-dollar mega-caps drag ‘em kicking and screaming higher. We heard that story who-knows-how-many times in 2024. Usually NVDA was the workhorse; sometimes it was TSLA or AAPL. But this is 2025. This is the market’s “new day.” And right now it’s the…
Don’t Get Caught In This Market Crossfire
There are a ton of earnings hitting us today and over the next few days - Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. But that’s later. We need to push that aside. There are bigger things to be concerned about right now. The market went into its usual pre-FOMC holding pattern, drifting around sideways… until a “classic” Trump…
This Trump Rally Is Hiding a Red Flag
So we got a nice bump for the week, for the most part, as the market gets more and more comfortable with the new administration. I can’t say it’s all good, though. I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t point out that there are a few reasons not to get too comfortable here.…
Don’t Bet on the “Trump Rally 2.0” - Bonds and Greenbacks Say No
We got strong rallies in the S&P 500 and NASDAQ today; a little less power on the Dow and Russell 2000, but they came along for the ride. Seeing as this is the last trading day of the Biden administration, I’m seeing some talking heads out there calling this the “Trump Rally 2.0.” Thing is……
This Rally Is the Hallmark of a Volatile Market
We got a rally today. Not the rally, but a rally. The S&P was up nearly 2% when I recorded this, and the NASDAQ was rockin’ more than 2.5% to the upside. We can chalk this up to CPI this morning; traders read the tea leaves and decided inflation had cooled off and it was…
The “Bond Conundrum” Is Driving Markets to the Edge
All of the big indexes got rocked to the downside today. On the surface, the market had a “good news is bad news” freakout about strong December jobs gains. We’ve seen this behavior before. Last week, in fact, I invited traders to “enjoy the bounceback… and get ready for another smack.” And that’s what we’re…
Enjoy the Bounceback… And Get Ready for Another Smack
Markets were up strongly today, bouncing back from this week’s beatdown. But here’s the thing. Correlation is high and still increasing. I’ve talked a lot about this recently. Correlation is tricky stuff. When you see stocks moving with no headline or hard, identifiable event driving that move - that’s correlation. And what it takes up,…
The Bear is Back and It’s Hungry
We need to talk about what's happening in these markets right now. Because the Santa rally is now toast… We're seeing something that should get your attention - extreme correlations across sectors that we haven't witnessed in recent memory. Sure, tech's been holding everything together, but when you've got the Dow and Russell…