It was a “Back to the Future” week on Wall Street. Reminiscent of this winter’s wild swings in the averages, investors were running first for their foxholes and then a day or even a moment later buying at the market in an effort to get in on the upside. On the surface, there were many [...]

A few columns ago I suggested that investors would be better served by moving out of Treasury bonds, CDs and money markets into higher yielding instruments. My motivation for that advice was two fold: the Federal Reserve had cut rates as far as it thought reasonable and my conviction that inflation was moving higher. That [...]

In homage to Jack Kirby, the creator of one of my favorite comic book heroes, the Fantastic Four, we took the liberty of casting oil as Doctor Doom, the Fab Four’s arch nemesis in this column. Given the monumental angst over black gold all week it is appropriate.

Ever notice that when the stock market goes up the number of negative stories dwindle while those with titles like “Recession? Not So Fast, Say Some” or “Why Inflation May Not Get out of Control” pop up daily? I call it the “confirmation effect” meaning that the media needs to justify why markets do what [...]

The markets spent the week trading in a tight range with only one day recording more than a one percent swing in prices and that day was down. After the bull run of the last few weeks a period of consolidation is not surprising. It is actually encouraging since a lot of stocks and sectors [...]

We hit the top of my trading range on Friday (S&P 1416) before quickly retreating. So far this market bounce off the lows has increased in vigor as we moved higher. Since the second re-test of the market bottom (S&P 1270) back in March, the bulls have been pushing this huge ball of worry relentlessly [...]

The markets went practically nowhere this week. That’s not to say it was a boring five days since first quarter earnings announcements delivered both good and bad news depending upon the sector while record highs in oil and gas kept traders on their toes. Yet, the real fireworks begin next week when the Federal Reserve [...]

“Finally,” you tell yourself scanning the wonderful, almost miraculous rebound in your IRA or brokerage account this weekend, “if the market keeps this up, I’ll almost be even for the year. Don’t get your hopes up just yet.

The bulls sure know how to take a beating. The quarterly earnings season began this week with a litany of bad news. First, Alcoa, then Advanced Micro and finally General Electric took turns announcing lower earnings and even lower future guidance. It took the wind out of the market on a daily basis but rather [...]

This week was different. Sure we had more than our share of bad news—80,000 lost jobs in March, UBS, a European banking giant, wrote down another $38 billion, corporate earnings have fallen for three straight months and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that “a recession is possible.” And yet the [...]