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I start this week's letter somewhere over Kansas on the way to Lake Louise outside of Calgary, Canada. I have been giving a great deal of thought to a speech I will do tomorrow and have decided to make the speech the subject of this week's letter. I have been given no particular topic other then to talk about something that I find of interest, but to keep it to 40 minutes and 20 minutes for questions. I am speaking to a conference sponsored by Peters and Company, which is a boutique energy investment bank. The 150 investors and clients...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Tim W. Wood 01.30.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive THE DOW REPORT "A Brief Technical Review" The current technical setup of the Dow Jones Industrial Average remains at a crossroad. The sell off in Dow Jones Transportation Average has brought it down below the previous trading cycle low. This is an event that has not occurred since the rally out of the March 2003 low began. This is also true of the NASDAQ 100 as well as the...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Martin Goldberg 01.29.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive "Nobody Needs A Hummer" A Technical Look at Auto-Related Stocks About 18 short months ago it appeared that the US auto manufacturers were in serious trouble. The US economy was in the midst of a soft patch, and it appeared as if automobile demand was turning down within a slumping economy. US automakers were facing pension liabilities that were magnified since they already had highly leveraged balance sheets. At the...

"...It seems that the banks are actively pushing Adjustable Rate Mortgages, and more than 25% of home buyers are opting for this type of mortgage. Suckers! What makes it so interesting is that this is at the same time as interest rates are at the bottom of the range of mortgage rates for the last few thousand years, and therefore there is almost no chance that rates will do anything other than go up. The banks clearly see the writing on the wall, and borrowers don't. And then we sit back in our chairs and wonder why the rest of...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Mike Hartman 01.28.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive Mr. Greenspan SpeaksIt is always fascinating for me to see all the players in the market jockey for position prior to announcements or speeches from the U.S. Treasury, the Labor Department, or any other entity that influences the financial markets. Today everything has been drifting sideways in anticipation of the remarks from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Throughout the morning and early afternoon stocks, bonds, and the U.S. dollar have...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Ike Iossif 01.27.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive "Weekly Report for Week Ending 1/23/04" Last week--in the monthly report--we articulated our reasons for expecting a pullback between current levels and perhaps 3% higher. All of the indicators have turned down after making contact with the top of their range indicating a temporary exhaustion. However, markets with such a strong momentum and liquidity behind them usually do not pullback along with the indicators. In most cases they continue higher...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us   Today's WrapUp by Jim Puplava 01.26.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive The Lull Before The StormFor a brief moment in time it looked like all economic storm fronts were ready to collide to form the Perfect Storm. The markets fell as the equity bubble burst. The economy went into recession. Companies with poor business models failed or went under and corporate scandals abounded and were found everywhere. For the first time since Pearl Harbor, the nation was attacked on its...

Unedited! The Dow and S&P500 were about unchanged this holiday-shortened week. The Transports added 1.2% and the Utilities were up 1.7%. The Morgan Stanley Cyclical index was up 0.5%, and the Morgan Stanley Consumer index was down 0.6%. The broader market speculative surge continues. The Russell 2000 added 1% this week. The Russell is already up 7% y-t-d, with a 52-week gain of 55.4%. The S&P400 Mid-cap index added almost 1%, increasing y-t-d gains to 4%. The highflying technology sector came under some selling pressure this week, following last week’s surge. The NASDAQ100 declined 1.5% and the Morgan Stanley...

The spin-meisters are hard at work proclaiming the long awaited healing of the US labor market. Jobs have now been up for four months in a row, and many of the so-called leading indicators of future employment growth -- jobless claims, work schedules, and purchasing managers’ hiring intentions -- are flashing green. And so the verdict has been rendered: At long last, the great American hiring machine is finally shifting gears -- marking a critical turning point for the US economy on the road to sustainable recovery. I don’t buy it. As I read the US labor market, there is...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Tim W. Wood 01.23.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive THE DOW REPORT "Equities" The price action this week is suggesting that we could now be near a very important juncture in the stock market. Notice on the weekly DJIA chart below that we have broken out of the rising wedge pattern in what is called a throw over. The question is: Does this upside breakout truly represent a throw over or has this rising wedge pattern been violated?...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Martin Goldberg 01.22.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive "Corollary to the Peter Lynch Principle – Only Buy If You Can Explain a Big Loss to Your Wife" And, “There’s Always a Bull Market Somewhere” With the market showing no signs of falling or even correcting in a meaningful way, it looks and feels like 1999 again. For those brave enough to have ignored general market fundamentals and intelligent enough to have bought technology and other speculative stocks based...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Mike Hartman 01.21.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive Stocks Regain Early LossesStocks spent most of the day in mixed trading that saw money move out of technology, especially the semiconductor group, and move to the relative safety of the large-cap “blue chips” in the Dow Industrials. At the opening bell, technology stocks fell sharply with the NASDAQ Composite down 27 points or 1.2% in the first hour of trading. The weakness in technology was attributed to a disappointing...

"...'You don't make money by knowing the future. You make money by knowing where your fellow investors have erred in the present. You can't know which horse will win the race, we remind you, but you can make a fair guess about where the odds are miscalculated.' And if anyone thinks that rampant creation of money will not affect inflation, then they are grossly miscalculating the odds, and you ought to sidle up to the two-dollar window and put some money on gold and commodities to win, place and show, because those nags will soon cross the finish line and...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Ike Iossif 01.20.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive "Monthly Charts" Quite often we lose clarity of thought due to the short-term gyrations of the market. Thus, I find it important to regularly examine the markets from a long-term point of view, even when our intention is to trade on a short-term basis.DJIA: It is attacking long-term resistance at 10,650. If it gets through, expect the 11,000 barrier to fall within the next 3-4 weeks, monthly support is at 10,000.DJTI:...

This morning I thought I'd stumbled into Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine and been transported to an earlier time. I have noted many of the signs of speculation seen recently, and I'm sure folks can come up with plenty of stories as well. But the example I'm about to share strikes me as the most vivid case of deja-vu thus far:Potluck Price-Targeting: A dead fish at Morgan Stanley downgraded Qualcomm (QCOM) this morning from equal weight to overweight, based on valuation, but raised his price target from $60 to $70. That disconnect of a stock downgrade and price-target upgrade was one...

Debt and the dollar, employment and interest rates, the US economy and world trade, money supply and inflation/deflation, taxes, deficits, commodity prices, politics, war, regulation plus a host of other variables. They are all related in a very complex and dynamic fashion. Changing one of them may change each of the others in often unpredictable ways, which in turn affect all the others. Today, we start a series trying to understand how they fit together and what the implications are for our investments. We are in a stimulus driven recovery. As noted last week in my 2004 predictions, I think...

With the world economy rebounding smartly in the second half of 2003, talk of global healing is back in the air. But compared with the circumstances prevailing in late 1998, when the stage was set for a spectacular rebound from the Asian financial crisis, today’s global economy is in a very different place. Despite the hopes and dreams of momentum-driven financial markets, I would attach a slim probability to another bout of global healing. It’s hard to forget the stunning turnaround in the global economy in 1999 that we dubbed “global healing.” For me, it was just about the last...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Tim W. Wood 01.16.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive THE DOW REPORT "How Market History Can Serve as an Important Guide I have recently been talking about and comparing the rally out of the October 2002 low to present with the rally that occurred from November 1929 to April 1930. The reason I am making this comparison is that the rally into April 1930 served as the rally which separated the first phase of the bear market from...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Martin Goldberg 01.15.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive "Stock Indices Go Parabolic! When Tools Do Not Work" The recent behavior of the stock market averages has gone from a robust bull correction within a secular bear market to a mania. All three averages have gone from a linear uptrend to an accelerated advance. This has made many technical analysts with a longer-term viewpoint look like playoff-eliminated Green Bay Packers coach Mike Sherman. It’s difficult for technical analysts when...

Home  l  Broadcast  l  Market Monitor  l  Top 10  l  Storm Watch  l  Sitemap  l  About Us Today's WrapUp by Mike Hartman 01.14.2004  Mon   Tue   Wed   Thu   Fri   Archive Rhetoric versus RealityWith all of the conflicting rhetoric coming from the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, European Union and the European Central Bank, there is good reason to be confused about the near term direction for stock and bond prices, not to mention currency exchange rates. Stocks opened higher today, with government bonds neutral to slightly lower. By mid-day Treasuries moved into positive territory with the NASDAQ Composite falling back...