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.

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.

  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.

  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.

  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 [...]

  This week, for the first time all year the S&P 500 Index has sustained more than a 1% pullback. It needs to correct somewhat more, and despite the short term pain, this sell-off is a good thing.

  It’s official. The markets have recovered every dollar lost since the beginning of the financial crisies and the onset of the Great Recession.  Congratulations are in order for all those investors who stuck with the equity market but what about those who didn’t?

You may be wondering how an island nation with an economy smaller than Vermont could set the world’s stock markets on edge for most of the week. The short answer is the markets are looking for any excuse to take some profits. That’s not to say that I am ignoring events in Cyprus, a small [...]

  The Dow made a new record high every day this week, except Friday. The S&P 500 Index came within a hair’s breath of its historical high as well. Most world indexes are doing the same thing. The consensus is that the markets are going higher–Uh oh.