Tag Archives: Earnings

Stocks Hit New Highs Even As Economy Shows Signs of More Weakening

Posted on by

Good morning and thank you for reading this week’s Monday Morning Market Commentary. As I talked about in last weeks commentary, this week was a VERY important week for the markets as we had a lot of economic reports coming out. By looking at the markets, you wouldn’t be able to tell that most of the reports showed the US economy is continuing to slow down, as stocks held up throughout the week and ended up closing at another all-time high. Bond yields followed a similar pattern for the week but are still well off their highs for the year.

All this has led to a change in our outlook for a few sectors/regions of the markets. I will be sending out an update to clients this week about changes we are recommending. Continue reading →

Stocks Make Lower Highs While Bond Yields Make Lower Lows… That’s Not Good

Posted on by

Good morning and thank you for reading this week’s Monday Morning Market Commentary. This past week we saw stocks rise all week, even as we received more and more disappointing economic and earning reports. Bonds, however, did seem to notice all the disappointing reports as yields dropped to lows for the year.
Let’s first look at the chart of the S&P 500 from last week. As I said and you can see, stocks rose throughout the week, with Friday being the only down day. Most indices were able to get back half of what they had lost the previous week, but this marks a lower high for stocks, which isn’t usually a good sign. The S&P 500 finished at 1,582.24, or 1.74%.
This week we saw bond yields continue their divergence from stocks and bonds put in a low for yields this year. Bond yields were basically flat all week with the big drop came after we received the disappointing GDP report on Friday morning. The 10-year Treasury yield finished the week quite a bit lower, ending at 1.66%. Continue reading →

Stocks Give Back All Of Last Week’s Gains & Earnings Surprise To The Downside

Posted on by

Good morning and thank you for reading this week’s Monday Morning Market Commentary. This past week we had the markets overshadowed by all the sad and scary events from the Boston Marathon bombing. My thoughts and prayers have been going out to the friends and families of everyone affected by this horrific event.
As for the markets, we had stocks take back all the gains they had in the previous week and bond yields drop back to a major resistance of 1.7%. As for economic reports, we had a ton of disappointing reports, as well as some pretty lousy earnings reports. I’ll talk about the disappointing earnings reports and some technical signals we’ve received confirmation of this past week. Continue reading →

Stocks Rise Sharply Even As Economic Reports Show A Slowdown

Posted on by

Happy Tax Day! Good morning and thank you for reading this week’s Monday Morning Market Commentary. I had some technical issues this morning and so the video won’t be up until this afternoon. Last week we had stocks push to all-time highs on some indices and almost-all-time highs on others. The surprising part of the sharp rally in stocks was that it came as many economic reports showed a slowdown in the economy both here and abroad and many companies’ earnings reports came in less than expected.
Before we talk about the current rally some more, let’s first look at the chart of the S&P 500 from last week. Markets started off slow on Monday and then midday started the climb to almost 1,600 on Thursday afternoon. We did have a slightly down day on Friday to close at 1,588.85, up over 2% for the week.
Although stocks rallied sharply throughout the week, bond yields only rose slightly. The starch difference in bonds and stocks came on Friday when stocks rallied into the close and bonds dropped into it. The 10-year Treasury finished the week just a bit higher, at 1.72%. Continue reading →

Jobs Report Hurts Stocks and Brings Down Bond Yields

Posted on by

Good morning and thank you for reading or watching this week’s Monday Morning Market Commentary. This past week we started to see a breakdown in the US markets that I have been talking about for quite some time. The week started off down and pretty much stayed down all week because of many pretty bad economic reports. We saw the biggest drop on Friday after an absolutely dismal jobs report came out. I’ll spend some time diving into this report because it sheds quite a bit of light into what is going on in the economy right now.
As usual, let’s first look at the chart of the S&P 500 from last week. After hitting all-time new highs, stocks took a big breather this week and spent most of the week in the negative. Between the US ISM Manufacturing index dropping, Europe’s unemployment hitting another new all-time high, huge rise in initial jobless claims, ADP jobs report also missing big, and the number of jobs added last month being just a quarter of what was expected, stocks really didn’t stand a chance. This all leads to an even bigger question, is the worst still ahead. The S&P 500 finished down to 1,553.28, losing just about 1% for the week.
Although stocks dropped this week, bonds continued to diverge from stocks and we saw the 10-yr Treasury yield drop to four month lows. Unlike the stock market, bonds didn’t rise throughout the day on Friday and closed near their lows for the week. The 10-yr Treasury yield had the biggest weekly drop in yields since June 2012. It ended the week all the way down to 1.694%. Continue reading →