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U.S. stocks fell sharply once again on Thursday after an address from President Donald Trump failed to quell concerns over the possible economic slowdown from the coronavirus.The S&P 500 dropped 7% shortly after the open, triggering a 15-minute “circuit breaker,” which temporarily halts trading at the New York Stock Exchange. The broad index also joined the  Dow Jones Industrial Average in bear market territory. The 30-stock Dow slid more than 1,600 points, or 7.%. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 7%.  Before the open, futures contracts tied to the major indexes fell to their so-called limit down thresholds, sliding 5%. These limit down levels act as a as...

Some financial writers have claimed that stock market crashes such as followed the 2007 Bubble are unpredictable and rare, calling them “Black Swan” events. More recently, the Covid-19 health threat has been described as a “Black Swan” event. Making the two together about as “Black Swanny” as it gets. However, a review of history suggests that severe financial crashes have always followed great financial bubbles. The transitions to busts have had much in common and the methodical pattern strongly suggests that even the greatest of crashes since the first in 1720 have predictable characteristics. Therefore, severe financial panics cannot be...

Looks like another blood bath today.  The Coronavirus hysteria in the media is drving the market down. https://www.cnbc.com/pre-markets/   

President Donald Trump proposed eliminating federal payroll taxes altogether for the rest of the year, according to a report from CNBC Tuesday. The proposal would include eliminating both the employer and employee payroll taxes on Social Security and Medicare, according to the report. “There was also discussion of making the payroll tax rollback permanent,” CNBC reported.

Video at link Cramer's not the biggest Trump fan. Apparently doesn't like the current health system. But he does offer advice that is probably correct in this scenario.

Stocks tumbled on Monday as investors braced for the economic fallout from the spreading coronavirus, while a shocking all-out oil price war added to the anxiety. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked more than 1,800 points at the open, while the S&P 500 dropped 7%. The massive sell-off triggered a key market circuit breaker in morning trading. Trading was halted for 15 minutes until 9:49 a.m. ET.

Stocks fell sharply in volatile trading on Tuesday as an emergency rate cut by the Federal Reserve failed to assuage concerns of slower economic growth due to the coronavirus outbreak. The decision to cut rates by half a percentage point came two weeks before the Fed’s scheduled meeting as the central bank felt it was necessary to act quickly to combat the effect of the virus spreading worldwide. It’s the first such emergency action coming in between scheduled meetings since the financial crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 785.91 points lower, or nearly 3%, to 25,917.41; it rose more...

Strategists at Goldman Sachs just reminded investors why they are dumping stocks hand over fist right now. The coronavirus may wipe out corporate growth in 2020, perhaps completely. Goldman Sachs said Thursday in a note U.S. companies will generate no earnings growth in 2020. Underlying the call is Goldman’s view that the coronavirus is expected to spread around the globe and severely harm economic activity. For 2020, Goldman slashed its S&P 500 earnings estimate by $9 and expects no earnings growth. Looking out into 2021, Goldman now sees $8 less in S&P 500 earnings and a modest 6% growth rate....

It's hard to tell if the superheated response by the Left (the media) to the coronavirus outbreak from China is due to there being a slow news cycle (which is hard to believe), a legitimate news story with U.S. ramifications, or as something to tattoo Donald Trump with a 'Hurricane Katrina' moment. As the media have amply shown, their zeal to tag President Trump with the most cockamamie accusations knows no bounds. Remember, some of these people still cling to the fiction that Trump is a Russian agent. They won't take "no" and multiple exhaustive investigations for an answer. As...

The mainstream media will never admit it, but Donald Trump is responsible for the most remarkable economic boom that Black America has ever seen.  For the past three years, this president has worked to ensure that America’s strong and growing economy works for all Americans, not just corporations and wealthy investors — and his efforts are already paying major dividends in our community.  I’ve said this before and I will say it again — the best social program in the world is a good-paying job, not a welfare handout. Thanks to President Trump’s policies — including massive tax cuts...

A majority of Americans in a new poll say they are better off now than they were three years ago. Just over six in ten Americans, 61 percent, told Gallup pollsters that they are decidedly in better shape than they were shortly after President Trump took office in 2017, a sign of a recovering U.S. economy. A little more than a third, 36 percent, said they are definitely not better off than they were in early 2017, while just 3 percent said their prospects remain the same. In early 2012, months before former President Obama won reelection over now-Sen. Mitt...

PHILADELPHIA — On a brisk January morning Markus Mitchell arrives at his desk at 8:30, his phone ringing before he can even log in to his computer. An employee at the giant nonprofit where Mr. Mitchell works is locked out of the organization’s network and needs the 24-year-old’s help. Mr. Mitchell became a full-fledged employee at JEVS Human Services in Philadelphia in October, after a year as an apprentice. Just three years ago, he was making $13,000 working in the kitchen at a Chick-fil-A, feeling unsure about his future. Landing the $38,000-a-year position was the latest step in a rapid...

The year 2020 could emerge as the start of the era of relative global chaos or major upheaval. It is the era we have been anticipating, as the impact of core population decline meets economic dislocation, and security and structural uncertainty. Changes in the fundamental sociological framework of global society, due to the end of the population growth cycle - and with it the end of the economic growth cycle based on expanding market size - were beginning to become evident by the beginning of 2020. It was apparent that 2020 was likely to see a major evolution in this...

[T]he data on the economy are giving [Trump] something genuinely worth boasting about. That was especially evident in the first employment numbers of 2020, released Friday morning. It was about as good a jobs report as an incumbent president could hope for nine months before Election Day — and not just in obvious ways. The big headline out of the latest numbers was that employers added 225,000 jobs in January, comfortably more than analysts had expected. That alone suggests that economic growth is steady at a minimum, and maybe accelerating as the year begins. The seemingly bad news in the...

"Every day, we are helping our forgotten communities and Americans achieve their full potential and live the American dream." President Donald J. Trump BUILDING A BRIGHTER FUTURE: The booming economy is lifting millions of Americans out of poverty and providing all people with the opportunity for a brighter future. Since President Trump was elected, 7 million jobs have been added to our economy, and the unemployment rate remains near its lowest level in half a century. The unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans have all reached record lows under President Trump. Wages are rising, with...

A tight U.S. labor market is drawing Americans off the sidelines at a record rate. Nearly three of four Americans who became newly employed in recent months came from outside the labor force—meaning they weren’t actively looking for work prior to the month they accepted a job. That is the highest ratio in three decades of records and helps explain how employers have consistently added jobs without stoking stronger wage growth. The unemployment rate, 3.6% in January according to the Labor Department, is trending near a 50-year low. That leaves employers with a shallow pool of candidates actively searching for...

The New York Times reported Friday morning that African American workers are seeing their wages rise for the first time after a “decade of stagnation,” further evidence of the strength of the U.S. economy. The Times report came as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy created 225,000 new jobs in January, smashing expectations. Unemployment ticked upward to 3.6% — but that was due to more workers entering the labor force, generating the highest labor force participation rate thus far in the recovery from the Great Recession. Average hourly wage gains also rose slightly year-on-year, to 3.1%....

The jobs market kicked off 2020 in grand fashion, adding 291,000 in private payrolls for the best monthly gain since May 2015, according to a report Wednesday from ADP and Moody’s Analytics. That was well above the 150,000 estimate from economists surveyed by Dow Jones and more evidence that the U.S. still is a good distance from full employment even with the jobless rate at its lowest point in more than 50 years. The total also was a sharp gain from the 199,000 in December, which was revised down 3,000 from the initial count. The ADP count comes two days...

Stocks rallied on Tuesday, building on solid gains from the previous session as the market recovers from a steep sell-off that was sparked by worries over the coronavirus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 450 points higher, or 1.6%. The S&P 500 gained 1.4% along with the Nasdaq Composite. Stocks that have been hit by fears of the coronavirus slowing the economy bounced on Tuesday. Apple jumped 1.9%. Nvidia and Micron rose more than 2% each. Companies directly impacted by the coronavirus, including Carnival, which confirmed on Monday that a former cruise-line passenger tested positive for the virus, rose. Carnival...

A black swan event is a term used on Wall Street that refers to a rare and unpredictable occurrence that is beyond what is expected and has severe consequences. It's derived from European explorers who had previously thought that all swans were white and only white, as that was all they knew. They were overcome with shock and confusion when Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered the existence of black swans in Australia. The coronavirus is a black swan event, which may have serious consequences for your job, the stock market and global economy. The United States economy has been...