3 Stock Market Investing Strategies For Beginners (48 min)

As promised yesterday, for those of you who enjoyed the condensed 16 minute version of the Heitkoetter video, tonight you get the link to the full 48 minute version that he posted last week.  It's been quite a while now since Barry Ritholtz has stopped running his weekly summary of market events on the weekend.  I've been looking for a replacement and thought I found one this weekend but it turned out only to be an advertisement for what we all know are countless informational offerings on investments, most of which are useless. 

Stock Market Investing Strategies For Beginners (16 min) - Trading Basics - YouTube

Marcus Heitkoetter has a website I follow from time to time and today he posted a video I felt might prove useful to anyone looking for simplicity in their investment strategies. This is a 16 minute condensed version of a nearly one hour video he posted a week ago. If you like this one, I'll post the complete production tomorrow.  

Wall Street rallies as Fed jitters wane, but ends down for the week

All that cash on the sidelines went to work today with all the indexes sharply higher after a weeklong plummet.  Today’s expert summed it all up, “Towards the beginning of the week you saw traders balancing their books ahead of the Fed statement. Once it came out, you saw ‘sell the rumor, buy the news.’”  The markets today finally acknowledged that all the earlier selling was based on conjecture which may be baseless. So the bargain hunters went to work and they’ll see what the Fed actually has to say at Jackson Hole next week.  Almost all S&P companies have reported Q2 now with 87% beating estimates. Volume was once again a little below average at 8.7 billion. 

S&P 500 ends with slim gain as tech strength offsets cyclical woes

With concerns over tapering growing, investors fled cyclicals and went back to the growth offered by tech when unemployment claims fell to a 17 month low, giving further fuel to the argument that the jobs market is strong enough to start the tapering. Earlier in the session the Dow was down almost 300 points as the reaction to yesterday’s Fed minutes continued to panic sellers, though optimism started taking over in the latter part of the session and the Dow closed down just 66 with the tech-heavy Nasdaq and S&P showing modest gains. There is so much cash on the sidelines and the trend during the past year has been to inject the cash on days of weakness, otherwise called bargain hunting. Inflation is the main concern and everyone awaits Jackson Hole to see what the Fed’s plan is.  And for the second time this week, volume is above average at 10.3 billion. 

S&P 500 ends down over 1% after Fed minutes

The whole day was going almost even –steven and then dropped precipitously right after 2 pm which had to be when the Fed published the minutes of the July meeting. The bottom line: “The Fed minutes did nothing to dispel the thought that tapering will begin soon.”  It was the vagueness of the statement that sent everyone to the exits, the Dow dropping 382 points, the Nasdaq 130.  As always, the one thing Wall Street hates the most is uncertainty, though in this case it wasn’t entirely warranted since the real story on tapering is coming out at Jackson Hole next week so last month’s minutes were likely deliberately vague. But earnings and economic data continue to point to a very broad optimistic outlook so the dip probably won’t last long. After a brief and ever so slight surge in volume yesterday, it was back to below average today at 8.8 billion. C’mon Jackson Hole! 

Wall Street slumps after weak retail sales, Home Depot results

With market valuations being so high, there have to be days when as today’s expert put it, “there is just going to be more vulnerability to any kind of bad news” and today’s bad news of retail sales coming in lower than expected triggered a mild panic since consumer spending has been the life preserver that’s been keeping the economy going during this pandemic. It didn’t matter that the drop in sales was directly attributed to the same old supply chain problems that has made it difficult to buy things; the Dow still closed nearly 300 down though this was a lot better than the 500 down it had been throughout much of the day. But the consensus remains that the fundamentals are solid. 

S&P 500, Dow hit record highs as defensive shares shine

After spending most of the day deeply in the red, all three indexes recovered by close as defensive buying shot both the Dow and S&P to still new records, making this the fifth straight day of record advances. The S&P has now doubled since March 2020 and the market environment remains supportive of risk so the upward pull on stocks is expected to continue. But much depends on the future of Fed stimulus policy so eyes will be on meeting minutes to be released Wednesday. Saving the day is the massive amount of cash that’s out there enabling investors to buy on every little dip and keep the market buoyant. Volume remains below average at 8.5 billion.