On the market’s risk complacency, I’m adding another VIX call to my Volatility Portfolio–this one for October
The CBOE S&P Volatility Index (VIX) dropped 8.9% on Friday, June 4, to 16.44. It’ up just slightly today to 16.73 (up 1.89%) as of 2 p.m. New York time. That’s, in my opinion, an extremely low reading on the fear index considering how many potentially...
PCE inflation up at 3.6% rate in April; financial markets agree that inflation surge is temporary
Inflation as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose at a year over year rate of 3.6% in April. Prices rose 0.6% in April from March, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced this morning....
What’s there to be afraid of this week? How about Wednesday’s CPI inflation report
Today’s drop in stocks–a drop of 1.04% for the Standard & Poor’s 500 and a loss of 2.55% for the NASDAQ Composite at the close on May 10–is a reminder that runaway economic growth is only one horn of the financial market’s fears...
Apparently everybody decided today that tomorrow’s March jobs report will show accelerating economic growth
With the financial markets closed tomorrow for Good Friday, traders and investors jumped in to buy today ahead of what is expected to be a jobs report tomorrow morning showing unemployment dropping to 6.0% (by the official measure) from 6.2% in February. The Standard...
Take what the market is giving you: Three short-term moves for short-and mid-term gains
The one certainty in the stock market right now, I’d say, is volatility. Both to the upside and to the downside. So I think we should take what the market is giving us. Using these three moves in the short term. 1. Buy a few buy on the dip candidates from my...
The financial market is feeling better today about risk–time to put on your worry hat?
You can judge the stock market’s mood pretty accurately today, Tuesday, March 30, from just a few price movements. Take a look at the performance of bank stocks, the small cap Russell 2000, the CBOE VIX “fear index,” and technology stocks to see...
Rotation turns to general selling
At 11:07 a.m. today the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 0.80%. At the close it was down 0.55%. Same picture for the small cap Russell 2000 index. Up 1.65% at 10:54 a.m. New York time. Down 2.26% at the close. What looked like one of the rotation markets...
Market squares positions ahead of weekend, but doesn’t quite make up for yesterday’s losses as trend remains to the downside
The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down 0.06% today, March 19. About as exciting as watching paint dry. The NASDAQ Composite, down yesterday, reversed that drop and a little bit more by adding 0.76%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), down 1.84%...
So why did stocks reverse their morning plunge and finish with a strong up day?
Maybe it was just investors and traders having second thoughts about selling stocks on a day when the economy delivered a surprisingly strong jobs report for February. After all, isn’t stronger economic growth a good thing for company revenue and earnings? Maybe...
Lots of trading action but no trend so far from Santa Claus
Today, Wednesday December 30, is pretty much the reverse image of yesterday’s stock market action. Traders are having fun–and making money, I’d hope–in the day to day action but I don’t see a trend in this market that might extend into...
This market is way, way too complacent
The VIX, the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index, gained 11% today to close at 26.03. But the index, which measures how much investors and traders are wiling to pay in the options market to hedge risk on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of stocks looking out...
Passive investing strategies look like they raise risk of big but infrequent spikes in volatility
Readers of on my JubakAM.Com site in comments to a number of my posts recently have been kicking around the question of whether the huge increase in passive investing strategies has changed volatility in the stock market. Passive investment strategies such as indexing...
Stocks rally today–but I’d feel better if volume was higher and the same old big techs weren’t leading the day
Today looks like a strong rally but I’ve got my doubts. At the close the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 1.60%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was ahead 1.34%. The technology laden NASDAQ Composite was higher by 2.26%. The NASDAQ 100, dominated by the...
Gold is climbing while VIX falls and stocks set new records? But why?
Gold is supposed to go up when investors and traders are looking for safe havens and hedges against market volatility. So it makes sense the gold and gold mining stocks are gaining as coronavirus stalks through the land. Gold closed up 0.99% today to $1570.50 an...
Failure to set Trump-Xi meeting place and date stalls market
It now looks likely that President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping may not be able to sign that Part 1 trade deal until December. The two sides still haven’t set a date or a place. The Chinese have ruled out the first two U.S. suggestions of Iowa and...Market goes to pessimism on trivial Pompeo comments–tells ya something, though
It didn’t take much to end the optimism of the past few days and turn the market at least mildly pessimistic today. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNBC this morning that Huawei Technologies isn’t the only Chinese company that poses security risks...
Stocks routed on shift in trade war sentiment
You’re entitled to feel whiplashed today. Just a few days ago, on May 16, stocks rallied on speculation that trade talks would resume relatively quickly and that the United States and China, rhetoric and tariff increases aside, would find a way within weeks to...
What the market fears is what it doesn’t know about the U.S.-China trade wars
The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell another 1.65% to 2,884.05 today on fears that there would be no agreement this week out of the U.S.-China trade talks and that President Donald Trump’s threats to raise tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese exports to the...
Unsettling market risk potential for Thursday and Friday
Today, Wednesday April 3, action in the three legs that support stocks near the highs for 2019 pointed toward significant risk for Thursday and Friday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed the day up 0.21% at 2873. Leg 1 for the market: The financials,...
Today this looks increasingly like a market in sector rotation
The major U.S. indexes opened the day strongly lower on disappointing earnings news and guidance from Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOG) after the market close yesterday. But the markets reversed in the morning–the low for the day for the Standard &...
U.S. stocks gently slide but VIX “fear index” continues retreat
If the market were inclined to sell off today, it could have found plenty of reasons. Under the heading of one-off scary stuff, I’d put:Â Continued tensions between the Saudis and just about everyone else over allegations–which look to be true–that...
Will today’s profit-taking turn into something worse?
I think today’s market downturn is nothing more or less than profit taking. It’s not surprising that investors and traders would sell Amazon (AMZN), for example, today (down 2.19%) since the shares were up 11.6% for the past 30 days as of September 4. The...
This market’s volatility puzzle–it’s as if investors and traders don’t think risk is climbing in the general market
Facebook (FB) falls almost 20%. Netflix (NFLX) tumbles 14%. Twitter (TWTR) is down 21% on earnings. Intel (INTC) finished today down 9%. And yet the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), which measures the price that traders are willing to pay to hedge risk VIX, the so-called...
A constructive day but the short-term key remains CPI inflation on Wednesday
The Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both finished in the green today, up 1.39% and 1.70%, respectively, after having held off a bout of selling around 3:46 p.m. New York time. Volatility also made progress on returning to normal....
More saber rattling in Korean standoff leads to modest increase in market nervousness
It’s not surprising that the major U.S. stock indexes are down today. So far today the North Korean foreign minister has said that President Donald Trump’s threats against his country amount to a declaration of war, and that North Korea has the right to...
Financials continue to rally in wake of reports of less damage than expected in Florida from Irma
Yesterday forecasts of lower than expected damage from Hurricane Irma were enough to light a fire under shares of insurance companies, the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) and the market as a whole. Yesterday shares of Swiss RE and Munich RE, two re-insurers that...
Market sinks; volatility climbs on strong economic news, D.C. chaos
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index closed down 1.54% today and the NASDAQ Composite fell 1.94%. Gold picked up 0.87%. The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) broke above 15 again, soaring 31.94% on the day. There was just too much for the markets to...
Not a lot of conviction today: Markets refuse to bounce or to fall farther
Each rally today was greeted with selling. Every dip resulted in a recovery. U.S. equity markets refused to go much of anywhere today after yesterday’s big sell off. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, for example, finished the day up 0.13% at...
Market goes from worried to freaked out today
U.S. President Donald Trump threatening North Korea with fire and fury was certainly enough to worry global stock markets yesterday. Taunts from North Korea overnight and a promise from that country to drop four missiles into the waters off Guam sometime around the...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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