Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 7.29.16 (plus Trump)

It's time for the weekly eye-shot and, this time, IMHO, it's a wash.  In fact, this time, I think the difference between the positives and the negatives are so slight that any item could easily have been in the other column.  Which is to say that the week mostly went quite well.  This Sunday's bonus is ... well, let's just say that not everyone on Wall Street is a Trump supporter.  In fact, most are not.  First I present Barry Ritholtz's hilarious indexing of all the ridiculous insults Trump has hurled against his opponents since Day One.  Second, another frequent Wall Street Journal contributor publishes his own take on how to defeat the billionaire -- in a few words, Hillary might lose unless she stops playing nice.  Oh well, the real campaign hasn't even started.  I doubt that in a month anyone's going to be accusing anyone of playing nice.  Hope everyone is dealing nicely with the heat and had a great weekend.

Can We Educate Investors? (Not really) - The Big Picture

This is something I've been talking about for a long time.  This is the reason I am studying to be a Financial Planner.

Tech shares and muted GDP growth push S&P 500 to record

This week has certainly been an excellent illustration of the fickleness of the market as, for five consecutive days, the Dow dropped like a rock right out the gate and then, due to an onslaught of good news, all but fully recovered by close.  Today it was more of a surprise though since after the "after the bell" great reports from Amazon and Alphabet yesterday, you'd have thought there'd have been a big rally this morning right out the gate.  Instead, bad reports from McDonald's and Exxon sent the Dow plunging once again, again almost a hundred points, before the day's big rally resulted in a close just 24 points down, all on relatively high volume of 7.3 billion.

Wall St. edges up; Alphabet and Amazon rise after the bell

Four consecutive days now that the Dow dropped over a hundred points right out the gate only to almost fully recover late in the session to close only 15 points down.  Today's trigger was a bad report from Ford and the latter impetus was due to a good report from Apple.  Unemployment benefits also rose more than expected.  Volume was right in line with recent averages at 6.6 billion shares.

Wall St. ends lower after Fed keeps rates unchanged

For the third consecutive day, the market dropped like a rock right out the gate, this time to the tune of 130 points, only to recover almost completely by close to end the session just 1 point down.  This time trigger was the announcement from the Fed meeting that the economy was going along okay with few worries about the possible shocks that could knock things off course, which is good news.  This of course opened the door to another rate hike later this year, which is bad news.  The bad news was compensated by another string of very good Q2 reports, particularly from Boeing.  The news was sufficiently positive that Q2 results have once again been upgraded, this time from a negative 3.3% to a negative 3 percent, quite a change from the negative 5% of just one month ago.  Volume wasn't bad either at 7.3 billion.

Wall St. mixed, Apple impresses and Twitter disappoints

A very strong housing report triggered fears that the Fed might raise rates after all on this, the first day of the two-day July meeting, and that in turn, just like yesterday, sent the Dow diving right out the gate though, due to more positive Q2 reports, the index recovered to close down just 19 points.  Investors still expect companies to do better in Q2 than has been forecast.  At 6.5 billion, volume was a little closer to recent averages than it has been.

Wall St. declines as earnings take center stage

Mon, 7-25-16

Worries over a global crude glut caused the market to drop like a rock right out the gate, but things did recover moderately before close to shutter at 77 points down.  The drop in oil made everyone a little more cautious today so most remain on the sidelines awaiting an onslaught of more Q2 reports.  Thus, volume was very light at 5.9 billion shares.