S&P 500 slides below closely watched threshold

It's goodbye to February as the rollercoaster continues - one day the S&P is above its 50-day moving average, the next day it's below.  Today was just another day that it fell just barely below, but most market watchers are just taking that as a sign that investors are now positioned for another rally.  Since oil has been running the market lately, today's irony is that the black stuff had a good day, rising 3% due to sentiment that the now nearly two year selloff may at long last be hitting bottom.  But that good news combined with strong February data on consumer spending was not enough to keep the Dow from diving 123 points.  Even energy as a whole dipped over 1% despite the surge in crude.  This may be yet another case where good news is taken as bad since the positive data may mean more Fed rate hikes.  With 8 billion shares traded, volume was near recent elevated averages of nearly 9 billion.

Succinct Summations of Week’s Event’s 2.26.16 (plus Oscar Night bonus)

It's time for our traditional Sunday night one-page eye shot of the week's major events.  And for Oscar Night, as the lead sentence will tell you, Ritholtz has a special treat for us -- a look at a different set of stars that you will see on the Oscars.  Tomorrow is Leap Day.  Hope everyone had a great weekend.

10 Weekend Reads

It's been quite a while since we've had a weekend reading list, and this looks like a good one.  Of particular interest are the articles from Scientific American on managing personal debt and the discussion on a topic that is very near and dear to us -- behavioral biases.  Enjoy the Oscars tomorrow night!

Wall Street ends lower in feeble end to strong week

Easy come, easy go with the oil markets.  With Venezuela coming up and energy beginning a comeback, shallow as it may be, investors are now looking elsewhere for worries.  The traditional candidate is back, that is the Fed and the market's concerns over future interest rate hikes.  Once again, good news becomes bad news as today's reports of a better than forecasted GDP and strong January consumer spending has resurfaced anxieties about another rate hike.  The 7.9 billion volume was just a bit below recent elevated averages.

Oil turns higher, pushes world stock markets up

So it seems there's a meeting brewing in Venezuela in a couple weeks in which a number of major oil nations including Russia and Saudi Arabia will be gathering to discuss the global oil glut and strategize how to stabilize the petroleum markets.  Thus lies the explanation for yesterday's rally and today's that shot the Dow up another 212 points.  Also boosting U.S. markets was positive data on durable goods pointing to a recovery in manufacturing.  Hence we had a good day, with a hint towards much better days if this conference yields any fruit.  Volume was decent at 7.3 billion shares.

Bulls chalk one up after late-day surge on Wall St.

About 30 minutes after open, the market took a nosedive plunging the Dow almost 300 points until a late afternoon surge in oil prices rebounded the whole thing and ultimately left the Dow 53 points up at close.  So if not for the initial sell off left over from yesterday's anxiety over bad energy loans, the markets would have had an extraordinarily good day.  At least the late rally provided evidence that investors are little more calm about U.S. energy companies' debts.  At 8.1 billion shares, trading was quite vigorous though still below the elevated averages of the past month.

Wall St. stumbles as oil slumps again

So the way it's been going lately is that one day either the Russians or the Saudis say they're going to consider cutting oil production.  And it's a good day.  The next day one of them says they don't think so after all.  And it's a bad day.  Today was another bad day when the Saudi Oil Minister ruled out production cuts anytime soon, sending crude down more than 4 percent and the Dow crashing nearly 200 points.  One day investors are willing the shrug it all off and pay attention to more positive macro indicators instead.  On other days, there is this worry that maybe what's happening with oil is about to happen to the whole world.  Today was one of those days.  JP Morgan didn't help matters at all when they projected $500 million in losses on energy loans.  Volume was 7.1 billion, close to usual averages but below the 9 billion recent elevated averages brought on by the wild swings of the past month.

Wall St lifted by muscular oil rally but some still skittish

I'm baaaacckkkk!!!  It's been a long 2-1/2 weeks out of the picture as I've been dealing with recovering from a TIA episode (two days in the hospital early February) followed by a stomach flu, followed by computer issues which I just this evening finally resolved after two weeks of struggle.  So what all has happened in the world of finance during this hiatus?  Pretty much just more of the same.  The market continues to be violently up and down on practically a daily basis, when oil has a good day the market has a good day, when oil sinks so goes the rest of Wall Street.  Being off all this time I began to wonder if maybe it would be more constructive to do a weekly posting instead of daily.  Yet I feel that going weekly will probably make me and everyone else lazy and then we may stop keeping up with things altogether.  So I'll continue with the discipline of the daily updates.  I for one get a lot out of doing this and I hope that sentiment is shared.  The fact that my metrics tell me that I get anywhere from 15 to 60 views per day tells me that there are indeed some of you who are getting value from this too.

Dow, S&P 500 rally with energy; Nasdaq dips

My goodness, I'm away for a couple days and the whole market falls apart.  I used to be a fan of Louis Rukeyser's "Wall Street Week" on PBS while he was still with us and it was a running joke for the many years his program ran that every time he went on vacation, the market would tank, and then immediately rally as soon as he got back in the office.  So today I'm feeling a little bit like old Lou, god rest his soul.