Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist Steve Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone said Wednesday he was seeing “more than green shoots” for the economic rebound.  He sees the deal market coming back to life and a return to the good old days of leveraged loans, toxic assets and IPO’s where you sell your company to the public at the most insane valuation of all time (sarcasm intended).  Despite this Read More...

The U.S. stock indexes closed solidly higher today and hit fresh 12-month highs. The DJIA today did push above the major psychological resistance level of 10,000, which should attract some more general investor buying of stocks in the near term. Stock index bulls have the solid near-term technical advantage and gained more momentum today, during what is a historically bearish time of year Read More...

Courtesy of Jesse’s Cafe’ Americain Team coverage today on Bloomberg by the Money Honeys as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 10,000 intra-day, led by J.P. Morgan and IBM, two companies that surely epitomize the illusions of wealth compliments of modern accounting practices. Can you believe the NYSE had the nerve to prepare new Dow 10,000 hats and distribute them for today? The Read More...

Mark Hulbert’s Sept. 11, 2009, column for MarketWatch.com says, Robert Prechter “came the closest … to forecasting what was about to take place.” One thing the noted financial columnist left out was that many of Prechter’s forecasts still lie in the future. The long-awaited second edition of Prechter’s bestseller, Conquer Read More...

CalculatedRisk There are several key points here: The pace of economic growth in 2009 and 2010 “was unlikely to reduce the unemployment rate appreciably”. There are different views on future asset purchases, although they agreed to remain “flexible” and will expand the asset purchase programs “should the economic outlook deteriorate”. There is “consid Read More...

I’ve had a number of requests from MarketClub members to produce another video on crude oil. Part of that may have come from the crude oil alert that we put on our blog on October 12. What is interesting about crude oil is the fact that seasonally, it should be going down. However, the market appears to be doing just the opposite. We have written about this before and when something is supposed Read More...

Mad Hedge Fund Trader GLOBAL RISK ALERT! Featured Trades: (GOLD), (SILVER), (CANADIAN DOLLARS), (AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS), (NEW ZEALAND DOLLARS), (BRAZIL), (RUSSIA), (INDIA), (CHINA), (TAIWAN), (SOUTH KOREA), (VIETNAM), (JNK), (TBT) 1) When everything is working, and my portfolio is firing on all 12 cylinders, I pinch myself and ask “Is this real? What can go wrong?” I’m reminded of the slave Read More...

CalculatedRisk On a monthly basis, retail sales decreased 1.5% from August to September (seasonally adjusted), and sales are off 5.7% from September 2008 (retail ex food services decreased 6.4%). Excluding motor vehicles, retail sales were up 0.5%. Click on graph for larger image in new window. This graph shows real retail sales (adjusted with PCE) since 1992. This is monthly retail sales, seas Read More...

Courtesy of Erin Geiger Smith of Business Insider The “good” news keeps coming for those pursuing claims against Bank of America. Earlier this week they found out they will get their hands on documents that show what BofA’s lawyers were telling it during the frantic time of the Merrill merger. Today the Wall Street Journal reports of an interesting email exchange between directo Read More...

JP Morgan Chase once again proved it is one of the strongest and best run banks in an industry still suffering from last year’s financial crisis. The company said today that profits in the third quarter rose to $3.6 billion, or 82 cents a share. Total revenue for the bank rose to $28.8 billion, resulting in record year-to-date revenue. This beat analyst expectations of profits of 4 Read More...

AC Investor ( click to enlarge ) AIG pulled back to support ( 10-day moving average ) on Tuesday. The weak market held back AIG, but I still like this stock for an upside move. I expect to see this move occur soon and will continue to watch the stock the next few days. The technical daily chart shows the stock is in a rally as K line is rising on top of D line as the price is back above 50 day mov Read More...

Courtesy of Phil’s Stock World 82 cents a share for JPM! That is a crushing beat of the 51 cents expected by analysts, who have been playing expectations catch-up for over a month, trying to get a handle on this quarter’s earnings.  JPM’s earnings are more exciting than GS’s earnings as JPM were supposed to be ”dragged down” by Chase Banking.  With $2Tn under management Read More...

The December Dollar posted a new low for the year overnight and tested monthly support crossing at 75.73. Stochastics and the RSI are bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near-term. If December extends this month’s decline, monthly support crossing at 73.39 is the next downside target. Closes above the reaction high crossing at 77.74 are needed to confirm that a Read More...

Mark Hulbert’s Sept. 11, 2009, column for MarketWatch.com says, Robert Prechter “came the closest … to forecasting what was about to take place.” One thing the noted financial columnist left out was that many of Prechter’s forecasts still lie in the future. The long-awaited second edition of Prechter’s bestseller, Conquer Read More...

The December Nasdaq futures index closed down 1.25 at 1,726.50 today. Prices closed near mid-range today. Bulls’ next upside price objective is closing prices above solid resistance at the September high of 1,754.00. The bears’ next downside price objective is closing prices below solid technical support at the September low of 1,590.50. First resistance is seen at today’s Read More...