Blog Archives

A Relentless Decay

August 29, 2011

Good morning. It was a nice bounce back rally for the market last week, with the SPY up 5.33 (4.8%) to close at 117.97. Volatility still reigned, however, with the market appearing unstable all week, seemingly always in anticipation of the next piece of news to affect the market. One of the big anticipated news items was the speech on Friday by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke from the financial conference at Jackson Hole. It was in that very speech last year that he outlined some of the potential policy initiatives still on the table at that time, and shortly thereafter he announced the so-called Quantitative Easing II (QE II).

Political Economics

August 15, 2011

Good morning. I think the term wild week for last week would be a solid understatement, although in the aggregate the movement on the week was fairly muted considering the intra-weekly swings. Two days of rally mode on Thursday and Friday had the SPY closing down only 1.6% on the week at 118.12, after trading as low as110.27 on Tuesday. For the last two weeks, however, Friday’s close was off a very somber 11+ points, or 14.8%. That is a rough ten trading days by anyone’s measure.

Don’t Drink the Water

May 4, 2009

Good morning. A mostly sane and slightly positive week last week, with the SPY up from 86.66 to 87.89, or 1.4%. The relative sanity was reflected in the continuing drop in the VIX, from 36.81 to 35.29, or 4.16%. You would need to go back to last September to find the VIX this low, and again it is an indication that investors are starting to feel (rightly or wrongly) that some positive things are starting to happen and maybe the worst is behind us.