Of late, there is a spring in small-caps’ step. Can it be sustained? In August, the Russell 2000 small cap index (1239.91) jumped 1.6 percent, even as the S&P 500 large cap index inched down 0.1 percent and the Dow … Continued
In an otherwise lackluster post-Great Recession recovery, housing has provided decent support to the U.S. economy. The only question is durability – or a lack thereof. Off post-bubble lows, sales of existing homes increased from a seasonally adjusted annual rate … Continued
Jackson Hole came and went. At the annual confab, Janet Yellen, Fed chair, last Friday seemed to agree with preceding hawkish messages from three prominent FOMC members – Stanley Fischer, vice-chair, William Dudley, New York Fed president, and John Williams, … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of August 23, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: In the Greenspan era, traders did not have to deal with the kind of mixed messages they do today. Back then, the message … Continued
Three prominent FOMC members spoke in the past week, and all three adopted a hawkish tone. Might they be trying to ready the markets for a rate hike in the September 20-21 meeting? With the U.S. presidential election scheduled for … Continued
That the green line in Chart 1 is increasingly taking the form of a coiled spring is non-debatable. That the longer it stays compressed in oversold territory, the higher the odds of a spike higher is non-debatable. What is debatable … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of August 16, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: One more prominent central banker this week seemed to throw his hands up in the air. John Williams, San Francisco Fed president, in … Continued
The two major U.S. presidential candidates share at least one common interest. Both talk about the need to increase infrastructure spending. Democrat Hillary Clinton has a five-year $275-billion program. Republican Donald Trump says he would spend at least twice as … Continued
XLY, the SPDR consumer discretionary ETF, acts well. It just broke out to a new high, as did its top three holdings – Amazon (AMZN), Home Depot (HD), and Comcast Corporation (CMCSA). These three make up 12.7 percent, 7.3 percent … Continued
To say that stocks have diverged from a whole host of things ranging from earnings to Treasury bonds to crude oil to economic data is an understatement. This is not some new phenomenon … has been going on for a … Continued