Intra-day, top-to-bottom, the S&P 500 lost roughly -9.2%. On a closing basis, it fell a little bit less… -8.2%. Does this mean that the correction is over? Are we not going to dip below the official 10% correction level here in the U.S. – a close below S&P 1035? With the third week in February showing a decided bullish [...] [...more]
It’s hard to imagine that stocks have been hit with 3 whole days of stock losses. Or is it 2 whole days and a mixed close for the major benchmarks? (Eight months ago, one might have been shocked by consecutive gains!) But today? In the midst of Dow 10,000 celebration and dollar devaluation? Actually, the reasons for the [...] [...more]
All of this talk about health care reform… and yet, very little talk about health care as a profitable sector for investors. I have discussed the extremely impressive run for biotechnology throughout the bear market, however. (See “Biotech ETFs Lift Portfolios Higher Than Broad-Based Health Care ETFs and/or “Pharma ETFs, Biotech ETFs Are Benefiting From Swine and [...] [...more]
U.S. stocks and U.S. high yield bonds rocketed off a Cape Canaveral launch pad 6 months ago. Asset prices rarely looked back… until now. The first day of September could have celebrated the headlines. After all, the U.S. manufacturing sector grew in August for the first time in 19 months and pending U.S. home sales rose in July to [...] [...more]
Here in the last full trading week of August, the markets may finally be getting tired. Consider the following: (1) Intra-day selloffs. The mainstream media keep pressing on about new 10-month highs. Yet these are the closing highs only. Both Monday 8/24 and Tuesday 8/25 witnessed the S&P 500 spike above 1035, before the barometer settled 1% [...] [...more]
