Yesterday morning, Europe was strong and we gapped up. The news out of Europe was the same as the news we’ve been hearing for 18 months. They finally got “some sort of a deal.” I gotta tell... read more »

Is there any more hated rally than this one?  Oh, I'm sure they are all hated because most tend to miss the boat, the biggest part of the move.  It is when the crowd is giddy and they go 'all... read more »

Normally the State of the Union Address would be the focal point for the week's events.  In a general sense this is still true, but our focus in this weekly series is much narrower:  What will... read more »

Lots of convergences about to play out this coming week with a plethora of earnings, a Fed meeting and important economic data including a first look at 4th quarter GDP.  Markets could... read more »

Frequent readers will recall that we have been out of the markets for awhile now. In order to reduce exposure, we’ve been sitting in money market funds waiting for investment opportunities to look... read more »

The euro crisis is no garden variety hazard for the financial system, or even the global economy, but market sentiment in the U.S. seems to be holding up quite well in the face of the latest... read more »

Back in 2007, I wrote extensively about the phenomenon I dubbed echo volatility, in which large VIX spikes are frequently accompanied by a second spike of similar size in the month or so following... read more »

In articles and media appearances during the past several weeks, we’ve hinted that there are fundamental problems with the economy and the market. While we have often traced these back to poor... read more »

Before you read this, I encourage you to read the book excerpt that inspired this by one of my favorite researchers Ed Easterling.  He explains in great detail the relevance of starting P/E ratios... read more »

Anyone who doubted, pre-election, that markets like gridlock need only survey recent headlines and earnings reports to realize just how wrong they were. According to one Bloomberg article companies... read more »