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It Just Keeps Rolling This old bull market just keeps rolling along. The current bull run celebrated its eighth birthday in March and is now the second longest since WWII. A bull market is conventionally defined as a rise uninterrupted by a 20% decline, which announces a bear...

Eyes On The Targets Investors who did not “sell in May and go away” are fortunate they disregarded that ancient Wall Street cliché. After a 1.2% gain on the S&P 500 in May, the S&P is up another 1% in the first week of June, In contrast to the continuing political clamor...

Stay On Target Stocks finished May with a gain for the month of 1.2% on the S&P 500, bringing its progress this year to 10%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was ahead slightly, holding above 21,000. The Nasdaq, which includes more technology stocks, was ahead 2.5%. This was...

Still Cleared For Takeoff With 85% of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 having reported earnings for their March quarter, the blended growth rate is a solid 13.5%. That’s the highest since the third quarter of 2011 and a strong sign that the stock market’s current uptrend need...

Seventh-Inning Stretch Stocks continue their upward trend with the S&P 500 Index ahead seven percent so far in 2017. As good bull markets should, the market has climbed a skeptical “wall of worry.” That’s encouraging, as history has repeatedly shown that markets usually...

Don’t Sell In May; Don’t Go Away Tax cut proposals took over the headlines this week. Simply putting them on the agenda sparked back-to-back market rallies that pushed the market averages ahead for April. It seems doubtful that major changes in our tax laws can take place before...

Paradoxes Prevail Since November, politics has dominated the financial news. The new Administration continues irregular progress with its campaign promises, faltering with reworking broad medical coverage. This led to reduced expectations that the tax cuts so eagerly awaited by...

Bad News Gets Higher Ratings “Don’t sell on strike news” is one of Wall Street’s oldest adages. This appeared in the 1880’s, reflecting a period when the newspapers put labor disputes in bold headlines. The slogan persisted until about fifty years ago as strikes against...

Market Tuning Beats Market Timing The financial media pump up fear and greed, often agitating investors to trade on emotions. This week, Tesla (TSLA-$297) hit a hot streak on news suggesting eventual profits. This sparked the rookies into thinking that it was time to get into the...

Calculated Risks Despite an irregular beat from Washington, the stock market continues to roll along like Ol’ Man River. The river is narrowing and there are eddies but the current remains unchecked. Since the unexpected victory by Mr. Trump almost five months ago, confidence has...

Tomorrow Is Another Day Finally, the stock market closed down more than 1% for the first in 110 trading days. The streak began on October 11 and was the longest uninterrupted rise since 1995. The only casualty was complacency, never a good idea, nor are emotional reactions to...

Three Steps And Rumble For the first time since November, the financial news was not dominated by national politics. The Federal Reserve took center stage, although not dramatically, as it raised interest rates exactly as the financial media had predicted. In its forecast, the...

How High The Moon? Stocks are marking time near 21,000 on the Dow, up 3,000 points in four months. With so many uncertainties and political rancor dominating the news, the market’s ability to hold this level might cause some wishful investors to echo a once-famous economist who...

He Keeps On Rollin’ Along The stock market continues to add momentum. After ringing up twelve straight record highs on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, it paused – for all of one day-and then gained over 300 points to close above 21,000. Only a month ago, market commentators...

Buy On The Rumors The beat goes on. The Dow Jones Industrials closed Wednesday at the tenth consecutive record level for this index. That’s the longest record streak since January 1987 when the market hit 12 consecutive record days. Stock investors overall seem to believe that...