February 2009

As we mentioned earlier, the market is all about winners and losers. If the market has both, volatility has the possibility to be lower even with economic news looking unfriendly.
The CBOE S&P Volatility Index (VIX) is only up 0.60% to 45.26% today – not exactly an end-of-the-world level. The Nasdaq-100 Index [...]

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Futures trading pre-market indicates a much lower open for the major indices this morning, currently suggesting the S&P 500 Index will drop below the 740 intraday low it hit on November 21st. Traders took some refuge in the fact that Monday we held that level and bounced Tuesday with Bernanke’s no-nationalization comments in the [...]

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The Gross Domestic Product for the fourth quarter was revised today, showing a contraction of 6.2%, which was more than surveyed economists feared. This decline is the most since 1982, according to Bloomberg. Job cuts and fear of future job losses may be the reason spending by consumers declined by the fastest rate [...]

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President Obama – in his first major address to a joint session of Congress and the American people -sounded a lot like candidate Obama, which I believe is a very good thing.
He appeared to be generally upbeat and positive in his assessment of what is needed and what is possible, to be done to [...]

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Bank of America is trading near $4.50 in pre-market trading. This is up from an intraday low of around $2.60 on Friday. This is a 69% increase in less than a full trading session. Not a bad return if you were fortunate enough to buy at the low on Friday. [...]

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I would like to respond to Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter who disparaged the new housing plan proposed by the administration and suggested holding a Chicago Tea Party to protest rewarding people who borrowed irresponsibly. As a person who also pays his bills, giving taxpayer money to someone who bought a house they obviously could [...]

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Last week, the market sold off because there was fear the federal government was going to have to nationalize some of the biggest banks in the country. Today, we are rallying in the pre-market because the government appears to be planning on taking a bigger equity stake. It may own up to 40% of [...]

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