Speculators Return to Stocks, Commodities and Resource Currencies

There are times when it pays to be a contrarian, to think outside-the-box, to bet against the conventional wisdom of the crowd, and ignore the chatter of the media. Usually at key turning points, and the beginning of important new market trends, the fundamentals do not explain the behavior of the market. It is at these critical junctures, where sudden shifts in price trends can occur, - big percentage gains or losses are registered. Sometimes, traders begin to notice that price swings in the marketplace are reacting contrary to what the news headlines are conveying. For instance, on April 1 st , the Dow Jones Industrials futures surged 550-points higher from their lowest level of the day, following news from ADP, that 742,000 American workers had lost their jobs in March, a staggering decline, with 5.7-million workers collecting jobless benefits. April Fools!

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Stimulus Commitments and Stock Market Confusion

Talk about mixed signals. Confusion reigns supreme. On Thursday the economy was recovering because factory orders went up for February, breaking a multi-month downtrend. However, today, there is no end in sight as the employment report was released and another 663,000 Americans have lost their jobs. There is another storyline there, but we'll save that for a different time. It would seem that commentators, economists, and policymakers alike are in a race to call the bottom. Fundamentals and economic analysis have all but disappeared under what is a seemingly never-ending wave of distortion caused by monetary creation.

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U.S. Jobs Contract 15th Straight Month; Unemployment Rate Soars to 8.5%

This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the March Employment Report . Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline sharply in March (-663,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.

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Dow Jones the Manipulated Stock Market Index

What About the Original Dow 30 Stocks?
Adding and Subtracting Value
The Original Dow 30 Components
A Few Thoughts from Richard Russell
How to Succeed at Writing
Conversations on Banks

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Stock Market Rally Some Room to Extend Further

All day long on Friday indexes labored as if in a topping process. That would have been no surprise, since my model had been saying all along that the top of this rally would be 840-850 in the SPX and 1300-1315 in the NDX. I had given up earlier this week on the indexes achieving their target, although a close call. Today it achieved its target.

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