Good day. This will take care of my call from the bullpen for now, so Chris will have the ball for the next couple of weeks until Chuck returns at the end of the month. The summertime heat finally loosened its grip on St. Louis yesterday, and the dollar strength, which had a tight hold in the markets earlier in the week, saw some pullback. We didn’t see much action in the overnight markets Thursday morning, so everything was fairly flat when I sat down at my desk.
[Read more...]Fed Meeting Spillover Aids US Dollar Strength
March 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Good day and welcome to another Thursday. We saw another summer-like day here in the Midwest that lends itself to throwing the winter coat toward the back of the closet and forgetting about it until next winter. While it’s still way too early to take such drastic action, investors have seemingly thrown the debt problems and other fundamental concerns about the U.S. economy to the back of the closet, hidden under that shirt you got as a birthday gift years ago that was never returned.
[Read more...]Investors React Positively as Retail Sales Increase
March 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As I was watching the market reactions yesterday, there seemed to be a lot of optimism floating around as equities rose to their highest levels since 2007, and the dollar, according to the dollar index, finished the day above 80. Yesterday started out with a bang on US trading as retail sales came in, as expected, with a 1.1% gain for February. This rise, which was the biggest in five months, coupled with a small upward revision to January’s number, had many jumping for joy. The higher retail numbers were being attributed to the better jobs report of late, which does provide support, but I would like to see a lot more before I join the masses by dancing in the streets.
[Read more...]Greek and Italian Turmoil Negatively Affect the Euro
November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Right off the bat, this is going to be super short and sweet this morning as Chuck was feeling under the weather last night and asked me to step in with some of the market headlines from this morning and last night. The market moving headlines yesterday and through today so far have been primarily European in nature, as Italy is beginning to steal the spotlight away from Greece in the debt crisis du jour. Since Italy is a bigger fish in the Eurozone than Greece, the levels of concern have been on the rise.
[Read more...]
QE3 Still an Option
Good day, and welcome to the last Thursday in April. As Chuck mentioned, I’ll be steering the ship today while he travels to Florida for some conferences, so the call to the bullpen has been made. All in all, it was a fairly quiet day, and if I had to make a call one way or the other, I would have to say Wednesday turned out to be a risk-on type of day. While the U.S. earnings season has definitely fueled the risk on campers, it was touch-and-go for a while.
[Read more...]