March 2018

Holiday Rally Major U.S. stock markets managed to finish a holiday-shortened week with strong rallies.  The Dow Jones was up 254 points on the day; earlier in the day it was up better than 400, so the last hour did see the U.S. markets giving up part of their gains.  The NASDAQ up 114 points,

Incredible Stock Market Volatility We’re having more incredible stock market volatility and I’ve spoken about the pickup in volatility as another sign that things are different; that we’ve had a change.  Increased volatility usually happens at inflection points, especially when we had a record period of minimum volatility.  A of a sudden, we’re having incredible

The Rally that Failed On my last podcast, which I recorded on Wednesday, I pointed out that the market’s failure to hold the rally in the aftermath of the rate hike. In the face of all of the bullish statements made by Powell about how great everything was, and how strong the economy was, we

Fed Surprised No One Today, the Federal Reserve surprised nobody. They raised interest rates by 25 basis points; the 6th rate hike since the Fed began, in December of 2015.  The rate is now between 1.5% and 1.75%, so the midpoint of that is around 1.635. So we’re still significantly below 2%, but I guess

Tomorrow is the first of the Fed’s 2-day Federal Open Market Committee Meeting, and it’s going to be the first meeting where there is supposed to be a rate hike and a press conference for the new chairman, Jerome Powell.  The markets are pretty much at 100% probability that the Fed is going to raise

Retail Sales Down Three Months in a Row I’ve got so much to talk about today, it’s hard to even figure out where to begin.  So I’ll start with some of the economic data that came out today, in particular, the February Retail Sales number. Remember last month we had a bad number, -.3, the

NASDAQ New High The stock market had one of its best days of the year; I think it was the second best day.  The Dow was up 440 points – just under 1.8%.  The NASDAQ was up 132 points; about the exact same percentage as the Dow.  The NASDAQ is now at an all-time record

Continued Stock Market Volatility The U.S. stock market continues to be extremely volatile, and as I have said many times on this podcast, I think this volatility following a long-term record lack of volatility is a good sign that the uptrend has changed.  So there’s a good chance that the bull market is now a