Trader Talk

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), July 21, 2021. Brendan McDermid | Reuters A quarter of the way through earnings season, we are headed toward the best profit growth in over a decade.  One fourth of the S&P 500 has now reported second-quarter earnings.  Overall earnings are now expected

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE I have several friends in the restaurant business. For the past few weeks, I’ve heard the same story every weekend: business is fabulous, and we can’t get enough help. This week, several of those restaurant people asked me what was going on with these Covid

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE Earnings season begins with two major tailwinds:  sky high prices and sky-high expectations.  On paper, second quarter earnings looks like the mother of all earnings reports, with estimates having risen steadily for the past six months, from expected 45% growth in January to

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The floor of the New York Stock Exchange, which has been quiet in the past year, has suddenly come to life. Traders have been returning, restrictions have been relaxed so more visitors can come on the floor, and the IPO business is booming.

Gary Gensler Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler is fleshing out his thoughts on climate risk and human capital disclosure. The SEC recently concluded a public comment period on expanding corporate climate disclosures. It has also launched a climate and ESG enforcement task force. In a speech

Traders on the NYSE, May 3, 2021. Source: NYSE Can you make an exchange-traded fund out of activist investing?  Earlier this month, Engine No. 1 came out of nowhere and won three board seats at Exxon Mobil after a six-month proxy fight. The company wants Exxon needed to significantly reduce emissions and move toward a

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The Federal Reserve, which has played a big part in confusing the markets, may be helping to clear things up. What happened to the argument that inflation would blow up bond yields? So far, it has been wrong.  With bond yields lower, not

In this article STT Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE This will be a very tricky Federal Reserve meeting for traders, but it won’t be much easier even after the gathering. Even if the Fed adopts a best-case, stay-the-course-on-tapering-and-rate-hikes scenario at the end of its two-day meeting Wednesday afternoon,

Traders working at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), on May 19, 2021. NYSE Is the great value rotation over?  The S&P 500 is at a historic high, but investors who earlier this year overweighted their portfolios into reopening stocks like Caterpillar and banks, and away from tech and other growth stocks, appear to be

In this article MORN Trevor Williams Thematic tech investing is exploding in popularity. Everyone wants to invest in funds that own clean energy, cybersecurity, electric vehicles, e-sports, robotics, 3D printing, and cloud computing. But watch out, Morningstar warns: The majority of these funds do not outperform the markets, have high fees, high failure rates, and

Stock market krisanapong detraphiphat | Moment | Getty Images Do you believe you are, or can be, a successful day trader, buying and selling stocks on a regular basis?   Do you believe that you, or anyone you know, can successfully time the market, going in and out of the market, and consistently make profits?

Traders working at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), on May 19, 2021. NYSE Thematic tech is seeing big price declines, but most investors are not bailing out.  It’s been a brutal year for the formerly red-hot investment darling, “thematic tech” investing, a catch-all phrase for emerging tech sub-sectors like Cathie Wood’s Ark funds, clean

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), speaks during a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, July 30, 2013. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said he would be aggressively pursuing bad financial actors who were “playing with working families’

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The Federal Reserve may be trying to project a coherent vision on what it expects its policy on future rate hikes will be, but the market cannot seem to agree on what version of the Fed it wants to believe. Does it want

People crowd outdoor seating at a restaurant as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions are eased in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S., April 4, 2021. Emily Elconin | Reuters A new book by Nobel Economics Prize winner Daniel Kahneman asks, why does everyone make such bad decisions and what can we do about it? Why do we all

What does inflation do to stock prices?  Stocks are reacting negatively this week to modestly higher inflation figures, but it’s not at all clear that the current figures are a long-term negative for stocks.  Higher inflation is usually looked on as a negative for stocks, because it increases borrowing costs, increases input costs (materials, labor),

Gary Gensler, then-chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images New Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler will testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday. This is the third House hearing focused on GameStop, but this is Gensler’s first appearance as chairman before the Committee.

In this article .DFII Traders working at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), today, Wednesday, April 21, 2021. Source: NYSE The NYSE is adjusting its Covid protocols and will allow more people on its trading floor. Beginning Monday, members of the floor community who have been fully vaccinated will be exempt from certain restrictions, including

Traders on the NYSE, May 3, 2021. Source: NYSE It’s not just about earnings anymore: Dividends and huge inflows are helping stocks power forward. April trading data is in, and it shows two surprises: an increase in dividends, and huge inflows into equities that are even stronger than the first three months of the year.

President Joe Biden addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., April 28, 2021. Doug Mills | Reuters If the stock market is considered a barometer of success, Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office is starting off with a bang…a big bang. Since the election, the S&P 500 is

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The reopening story is now getting very real, at least for Wall Street. Today’s crop of earnings reports are chock-full of companies reporting earnings above expectations and, most importantly, raising guidance. Take steel maker Nucor, which reported what CEO Leon Topalian called the

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The market is showing some signs of exhaustion, and with good reason.  Most major parts of the market have run up significantly in the past month.  But there is a growing chorus warning that we are at “peak everything.” That is, peak earnings

Traders on the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE This is a very powerful rally. The combination of surprisingly strong economic reports and even more surprisingly strong earnings reports is pushing broad swaths of the U.S. stock market to new highs. Even the technicians are impressed. “The vast majority of NYSE stocks are in intermediate-term

In this article PEP A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE Everyone knew earnings were going to be good, but this is really good. “There’s evidence every day that growth is clearly improving around the world, today from the US to Australia,” Ed Hyman, chairman and head of the

Gary Gensler, then-chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Senate is likely to confirm Gary Gensler as the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission either Wednesday or later this week, and crypto assets — including bitcoin — are likely high on his agenda.

In this article COIN Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018. Steve Jennings | Getty Images for TechCrunch The pending Coinbase direct listing, scheduled for April 14th on the Nasdaq under the symbol COIN, is exciting a broad base of the investment community outside the usual cryptocurrency crowd. “Coinbase is

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Source: NYSE Earnings season starts with a rare confluence of bullish factors: stocks at new highs, economic reports exceeding expectations, the vaccine rollout accelerating, an uber-dovish Fed, higher tax fears diminishing, and most importantly, expectations that CEOs will provide far more guidance than they did

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE Is this as good as it gets?  It seems like everything is working, and with good reason: the broad rally is supported by an accelerated vaccine rollout and recent economic reports which have been robust across the board. Nonfarm payrolls.  ISM Manufacturing. ISM