Quiet day for the broad markets on Thursday as investors look to the jobs report today. The consensus is improving jobs are the most important data point for investors moving forward. While I am not sure that is true we will accept the proxy as an key data point. The expectations for the number are 121,000 new jobs [...]

Maybe I should have talked bad about the market sooner. The move on Wednesday pushed the indexes higher, but it still showed some doubt the last hour. The small cap stocks were the clear winner adding more than 2% on the day. Basic materials were up 1.35% and financials gained 1.6%. This pushed the S&P 500 [...]

The market is turning back to the up and down syndrome, with the end result of moving sideways the last week. The headlines are full of how great January was relative to the broad market indexes. The news makes great headlines, but what is the market doing now? The more relevant question for investors is [...]

The broad market indexes dropped more than one percent to start the trading week, but managed to work its way back to positive on the NASDAQ and down just 0.25% on the S&P 500 index. Why? There was the European Union meeting in Brussels which made investors nervous, but as the day unfolded they were [...]

The month of January comes to a close this week. There has been plenty to cheer as the worries subsided and optimism prevailed. The positive stories remain, but the old worries are starting to surface yet again. The European Union has a meeting on Monday in Brussels to discuss further the issues relative to the sovereign debt crisis. [...]

Weaker than expected economic data Thursday left investors questioning the current move higher for the broad markets. It is hard to say that one month of data is trend changing, but it does play havoc with the confidence investors display towards owning stocks. The housing sector is a sector we have tracked on the upside [...]

Wednesday brought buyers back in following a weak open as the Federal Reserve made surprise comments relative to keeping interest rate low for another two to three years. Dollar dropped… inflation, gold jumped… inflation, stocks rallied… easy money. Yields on bonds tanked initially, but recovered into the close. The Fed announcement threw another log on the [...]