Labor Report Sends Equities Soaring - May 4, 2013 15:33

While Friday’s jobs may have been more fiction than fact (see Dave in Denver’s breakdown of it here) that didn’t stop the computers from kicking the programs into overdrive and run some overhead short positions which took the S&P 500 over 1600 to close at 1614.42 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly over 15000 […]

Commodity and Equity Bifurcation Continues Towards Plaid - April 23, 2013 21:42

The markets have gone plaid.  We had horrible Chinese and German flash PMI data come out this morning which kept commodity prices under duress all day. Copper continues its trek towards $3.00 per lb.  Silver broke back below $23 after challenging $24 yesterday. The grain complex was whacked across the board in late session trading […]

Big Earnings Day in Technology Revealing of New Trends - April 18, 2013 23:18

Intel’s earnings yesterday just a week after an IDC report stated that PC sales had dropped 14% year over year in Q1 seemed to corroborate that report.  Profit was down 25% for Chipzilla.  Today Advanced Micro Devices announced earnings that were equally challenging, showing erosion of revenue and unit shipments in laptops, notebooks and desktops.  […]

Dow Momentum Carries S&P Without Conviction Higher - March 8, 2013 2:50

I’m going to call a spade a spade here and say that it’s pretty easy to move 10-12 stocks in a price-weighted index like the Dow Jones Industrial Average which can have huge spillover effects into other markets, creating momentum-driven buying or selling — especially in today’s algorithm-based pseudo markets — that are completely divorced […]

Dow Sets Record, Everything Else is Contained - March 5, 2013 23:17

When Alan Greenspan was brought out of his coffin — only at night by the way — a couple of weeks ago he made it clear that the Federal Reserve believes it can create economic prosperity through the manipulation of perception.  And the greatest tool for attenuating the strength of the Fed’sreality distortion fieldis the […]

S&P 500 Continues to Inch Towards All-Time High - February 15, 2013 2:53

With options expiration tomorrow — the 3rd Friday coming early this month — the S&P 500 continues to grind its way towards the all-time high near 1550.  The problem that many investors should be wary of as we approach this level, and at this point a re-test feels inevitable — one does not fight the […]

Unemployment Sends Risk Assets Up on QE Expectations - February 2, 2013 2:57

The equity markets are all in levitation mode now that all of the U.S. economic data for the week came in decidedly bearish.  Bearish data should not be bullish for stocks and commodities, but it is when the markets only function because of non-economic money printing by central banks.  This is known in common parlance […]

Changing of the Smartphone Guard? - November 12, 2012 23:08

With the news — well, the source is Digitimes so salt to taste — today that Apple is already working on the iPhone 5s and it will be ready by Q1 2013 it should highlight just how much trouble the purveyor of all gadgets cool and hip may be in.  The need to turn their […]

Apple’s Push Towards Full Mobile May Leave Intel Behind - November 6, 2012 0:32

There’s a report that Apple is working on a version of an ARM SoC that could replace Intel chips in their full service Macs.  Since iOS and OS/X share the same code-base, similar to Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 from Microsoft, creating a port of OS/X to run on the ARM architecture is not […]