In an amazing turn of events, the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 stock market indexes ended one of the most turbulent weeks in their history virtually unchanged in percentage terms, while the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 closed higher on the week, with the Russell increasing almost 5.00% Let’s take a quick look at the…
MarketWatch.com released a visual representation and timeline of the wild economic and trading activity of the previous week in their image post entitled “Five Days that Shook the Financial World.” The image compares the daily percentage change (in an informative line graph) for Gold, the Dow Jones, CBOE Volatility Index, Financial Stocks ETF, and the…
I wanted to show a quick snapshot of the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 indexes this morning following the massive overnight gap which is so far being faded but it would surprise me to no end if the entire gap was filled. Let’s look: S&P 500 Daily: Whether or not ‘the technicals still work,’ we…
Robert Kutner of The American Prospect published an article entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins of Deregulation and Three Necessary Reforms” that I wanted to highlight for some background information on a possible explanation of the economic situation we’re experiencing. Kutner writes: “The current carnage on Wall Street, with dire spillover effects on Main Street, is…
If you haven’t been following gold prices lately, there’s something interesting that may grab your attention and is at least worth a second look. First, gold prices skyrocketed 10% Wednesday and then rose by a similar amount today, yet closed lower on the day. What gives? Let’s look at these developments. First, Gold ($GOLD) on…
A reader asked me to check on emerging markets and discuss their recent underperformance since the July market bottom. Here, I look at the MSCI Emerging Market Index, and compare it to the EAFA (Europe/Asia/Far East) and the S&P 500. First, let’s put them all together and look at their performance for 2008: The EFA…
The selling pressure was not contained today to Financial stocks – the NASDAQ lost 4.94% today, the greatest decliner of the four major US Equity Indexes, followed closely by the Russell 2000 (off 4.82%). Many technology and small-cap stocks fell greater than 5.00% today. Let’s take a quick snapshot of Apple Inc (AAPL) and view…
Goldman Sachs (GS) has held up remarkably well throughout the 2008 Financial sector decline, but even it is now not immune from sharply and rapidly declining prices, as the markdowns in the Financial sector continues. Let’s look at the multi-time frame charts of Goldman (GS) to see if there’s any clues or to assess what’s…
I’ve been listing it as a potential target for some time and today the S&P 500 Index tested the 50% Fibonacci Retracement from the 2002 low to the October 2007 high major price swing – it’s also a 50% Retracement of the recent Bull Market – breaking beneath this level would be extraordinarily significant. Let’s…
There were so many stories and cross-currents from Monday’s index declines, but let’s break it down by sector and see what the respective percentage decline was per AMEX Sector. AMEX Sector SPDR Performance: The Financial sector declined almost 10% in one day, with Energy prices – spurred by the 5% decline in crude oil prices…