By my reckoning, this leg of the stock market rally began about a week after the presidential elections. The rally overall has been going on much longer. The question everyone is asking is how long it can go on without a major correction.

  The housing market has been in the doldrums so long that most of us believe that when we are ready to buy a new home there will be plenty of deals out there. Think again, the rising costs of everything from land to labor are causing new home prices to climb.

Investors hit the cash register again this week as all three indexes gained. And it wasn’t just here in the United States. European markets gained steam as well while Japan absolutely shined. After four years of volatility, we earned this rally.

  Over the last decade, online enrollment in college classes has exploded. Many hope that it will ultimately help reduce the burgeoning future costs of a college education. The evidence, thus far, indicates that we have a long way to go.

  The S& P 500 Index made record highs this week. It is catching up with the Dow, which has been making new highs now for over a month. Yet many investors do not believe this rally. Some are still sitting on the sidelines waiting and praying for a pullback that has not occurred.

  In the wake of across the board government spending cuts, this month President Obama proposed a new R&D initiative aimed at mapping the brain. Critics immediately balked over the $100 million price tag, but those protests may be penny-wise but pound foolish given some of the breakthroughs government has achieved in the past.

  It was another good week for the averages with all three indexes chalking up five days of gains in a row. Friday, however, was a mild disappointment thanks to the latest GDP data.

Tuesday’s ‘flash crash’ precipitated by a fake tweet attributed to a major news organization is old news by now. No long term investors got hurt in the debacle and by the end of the week it was business as usual in the nation’s exchanges. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen again and again.

  Markets pulled back this week for a variety of reasons. None of them are more than short term concerns but when a market is ripe for a sell-off it doesn’t take much to tip it over.

  If one looks back over the last decade, April has been a good month for the stock markets. On average, the S&P 500 Index has risen almost 2% in April with the lion’s share of gains coming in the last two weeks of the month. Month to date, the S&P 500 Index is up [...]