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A dearth of knife-catchers and bottom-callers suggests that our views on a broad swathe of investors being caught unhedged and offside by Bernanke's relative inaction was correct. By the look of today's huge selloff, investors will become increasingly aware of our recent post on the difference (risks) between owning stocks and bonds. The equity market remains a market in chaos as the following charts show. We can only assume they must be extremely good at discounting whatever it is that talking-heads believe on a tick-by-tick basis - just look at the flip-flopping in the last two months (and in...

As we consult our quotes, we see the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 2.11% this morning, having been open a mere two hours. That must have been some jobs speech!

Dear Freepers, please help me out! A firend of mine sent me an e-mail which featured a link to someone who is apparently an economist names Harry S. Dent, with a video ink (I'm including). I have never heard of this man, and I began to watch the video, in which he defines what he think is going on with the economy. Thus far (I have only watched about half), all I can gather is that he believes that we are headed towards DEFLATION and that all commodoties are in a bubble and that whenever their is a crisis, people...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks posted their biggest jump in nearly two weeks on Tuesday. Investors picked up cheaply priced stocks after fears that the U.S. would slip into a recession pounded the market over the last month. The Dow jumped 322 points, its best day since Aug. 11, when it gained 423. The Dow dipped about 60 points shortly after an earthquake hit the East Coast at 1:51 p.m., but recovered within 20 minutes and soared even higher in the afternoon. James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, said the beating stocks have taken since late July...

There’s an old expression that goes, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you’re a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” In what has to be seen as a defining moment in Barack Obama’s failed presidency, the POTUS Ignoramus took to the airwaves today to “reassure the American people” that America is still doing well under his leadership, and that Standard & Poor’s downgrade of America’s credit rating was obviously a mistake. The telling moment: Just after Obama suggested that the way to restore our credit rating and to overcome our debt problems...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Does anybody now doubt that this is on purpose? I mean, after all, Barack Obama inherits a AAA credit rating from George W. Bush, and look what he does to it. Obama is always running around complaining and whining and moaning about all that he inherited from George W. Bush. Well, he inherited a AAA credit rating, an unemployment rate of 5.7%. Does anybody doubt that this is on purpose? Well, look, my credit rating doesn't suck. There are a lot of individual Americans whose credit ratings aren't in trouble. The United States has never been in...

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 513 points, or 4.3 percent, to 11,384 on Thursday. Here's a look at the Dow's 10 worst days since 1899: By percent decline:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Why am I here today? This always happens. Every time we have one of these national holidays, nobody tells me. I don't keep track of national holidays. Obama's birthday. I don't keep track of national holidays, nobody ever tells me, and I end up being the only person in the country working. Why is the Dow going down? Let me tell you why the Dow is going down, is because there's a story out there that said that Bernanke and Obama are out of bullets. There's a story that says Bernanke and Obama are out of bullets,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors fled stocks on Thursday, putting the S&P 500 into correction territory, as worries about the U.S. economy and European debt escalated. All three indexes were down 2 percent, having fallen more than 3 percent each at one point. Decliners beat advancers on the New York Stock Exchange by 14 to 1. "People are throwing in the towel because they can't find relief on any front. There are a lot of worries about the economy," said Milton Ezrati, market strategist at Lord Abbett Co. in Jersey City, New Jersey, which manages $110 billion in assets. The...

Just a headline so far. The war against Murdoch and FOX News continues. Hinton is the latest casualty.

Someone has to say it: “Doomsters, you have been wrong now for nearly two years. Why not shut up?” On the one hand doomsters are very profitable for me because they represent the sentiment that makes stocks cheap for me to buy. However, on the other hand, I’m fed up with the bearish pollution sloshing around the media. Are these doomsters making money? If so, how? Of course there are problems, were problems, will be problems. But the credit crunch crash is dead and we are now healing. We will be healing for more years to come. The market will...

The stock market is all about nominal prices. That is, prices that aren't adjusted for inflation or what analysts call "relative performance" -- how an investment has fared when compared with competing assets. While this may seem like a parlor game, comparing how investments fare over time is a key element in portfolio management. Relative performance boils down to this: Sell assets that are historically overpriced, and buy assets that are historically underpriced. The equities industry and the financial media tend to shy away from relative-performance analyses, and a few charts help explain this reticence. But in short, when adjusted...

Uh-oh. Jeffrey Hirsch, author of the long-running 'Stock Trader's Almanac' has forecast the Dow Jones Industrial Index to hit 38,820. But the catch is that he believes the majority of future gains won't start until 2017, when we enter an eight-year super boom. So he's forecasting Dow 38,820, by 2025: Bloomberg: “All previous major economic booms and secular bull markets were driven by peace, inflation from war and crisis spending, and ubiquitous enabling technologies that created major cultural paradigm shifts and sustained prosperity,” he wrote in a press release sent with the 44th edition of the book. So he's looking...

"Sign, sign everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind, Do this, don’t do that, Can’t you read the sign?" --The Five Man Electrical Band, 1971 A big drop on Friday wiped out earlier gains in the week and left the Dow Jones Industrials down 1%. The Dow is lower by 3.2% since January 1. The S&P 500 pulled back 1.2%, its third weekly loss in the past four. NASDAQ showed a loss of 0.8%. Corporations reported quarterly earnings in earnest last week and the news has largely been good. So far, three out of four companies have...

According to one leading expert, the Dow could hit 50,000 by 2015 and 100,000 by 2020. Should you buy? Maybe. But then, another expert says the Dow could lose 90 percent of its value and close below 1,000 by year end. Oh my! Should you sell? What's a wise investor to do? A wise investor will ignore this nonsense. Wild market predictions aren't investment advice. They're grandstanding by newsletter writers and investment gurus trying to grab media attention. Sometimes I wonder if the self-proclaimed market experts who make these predictions do double duty as supermarket tabloid headline writers and come...

Homeland Security: President Obama promised lobbyists wouldn't run his White House. They're just doing it from across the street — at a Shariah-compliant coffee chain tied to a radical jihadist group. That's right: According to the New York Times, prominent K Street lobbyists are buttonholing Obama officials at a Caribou Coffee shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, raising far more than just ethics questions. What the Times story neglects to mention is that Caribou Coffee is a Shariah-compliant firm owned by an Islamic bank based in Bahrain. One of its founders and a current adviser are leaders in the radical Muslim Brotherhood....

Will Dow 10000 turn out to be a long replay of Dow 1000? Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 10000—again. Since March 16, 1999, when it first touched 10000 in intraday trading, the Dow has bounced over that threshold and back 63 times. This Friday, the index closed 219.6 points below where it stood exactly 11 years ago. This isn't the first time stocks have been stuck on a seemingly endless pogo-stick ride. On Jan. 18, 1966, the Dow hit an intraday high of 1000.50. It broke through the four-digit barrier three more times that January and...

One step forward, one step back, the stock market is acting like the hokey pokey so far in 2010. With lots of movement but not much change, U.S. equity prices are virtually where they started the year. The Dow Jones Industrials is -2.8% since January 1, while NASDAQ is -0.5%.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Friday as data showed consumer spending was unexpectedly flat last month and growth of U.S. Midwest business activity slowed more than expected. Investors jumped on the chance to book gains heading into a long holiday weekend and after Wall Street's rally in the previous session. May is on track to be the worst month for stocks since February 2009 after hitting an 18-month high in late April as investors fretted over a debt crisis in Europe and its implications for global growth. The Commerce Department said April was the first month since September...

The euro was weak again early Thursday and, predictably, global stocks followed suit. Japan's Nikkei fell 1.5% overnight, major European bourses were down 1.85% to 3% in recent trading, while U.S. proxies were down 2.5% to 3%. In recent trading, the Dow was below its 200-day moving average of 10,250, while the S&P 500, Dow Transports, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 were each more than 10% below recent highs, or in official "correction" territory. Traders watch such technical indicators closely, and concerns about moving averages and the like can become self-fulfilling and generate more selling. At the same time, the selloff...

Stocks fell sharply Thursday after an unexpected spike in jobless claims and as global jitters pushed the dollar higher. -snip- The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down nearly 300 points, or almost 3 percent, and the CBOE volatility index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, spiked more than 20 percent to above 43, its highest level in over a year.

Dow Theorist: Sell Everything Liquid, You Won't Recognize America By The End Of The Year Joe Weisenthal May. 18, 2010, 8:57 AM Image: US Army WHOA! Richard Russell, the famous writer of the Dow Theory Letters, has a chilling line in today's note: Do your friends a favor. Tell them to "batten down the hatches" because there's a HARD RAIN coming. Tell them to get out of debt and sell anything they can sell (and don't need) in order to get liquid. Tell them that Richard Russell says that by the end of this year they won't recognize the country....

Early last week, the stock market cheered a $1 trillion bailout package to contain Europe’s debt crisis. The Dow Jones Industrials went up more than 400 points on Monday. By the end of the week, however, worries returned that European austerity plans would slow economic growth. The euro sank to a four-year low. Just a while ago, the euro was being touted as the world’s primary currency in-waiting. On Friday, the Dow dropped 1.5% to trim the week’s gain to just 240 points. The S&P 500 snapped a two-week decline to close +2.2%. So far in 2010, both the S&P...

NEW YORK – Stocks dropped again Friday after concerns grew that the deep spending cuts under Europe's bailout plan could slow a global recovery. The euro dropped to a 19-month low. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 215 points in afternoon trading following a slide of more than 3 percent in European markets. Investors seeking safety piled into Treasurys, the dollar and gold, which hit another record. Crude oil sank 4 percent, and an indicator of stock market volatility jumped. Currency traders have been moving out of the euro throughout the week because of concerns that cost-cutting measures in countries...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 404.71 points, or 3.9%, to 10785.14, helped by gains in all 30 of its components. The average had its biggest one-day gain in both point and percentage terms since March 23, 2009. The Standard Poor's 500-stock index rose 4.4% to 1159.73, led by its financial and consumer-discretionary sectors, up more than 5% each. All the broad measure's other indexes posted gains as well.

Here is amazing video from CNBC this afternoon of stock guru Jim Cramer on air with Erin Burnett and others as they watched the Dow drop to nearly 1,000 points down and then rebound dramatically to a drop of less than 400 points. When the video begins, it shows Cramer talking about Proctor & Gamble being down to $47.01, off over $15 for the day. Cramer said PG was worth more than that, and urged people to buy it at that price. By the time the video ends, it had rebounded to over $60 a share, and was only off...

While everyone is scratching their heads and trying to figure out how the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) lost nearly 1,000 points before rallying back to lose only 347 points - it appears not to be limited to just one stock. On CNBC's May 6 "Closing Bell," correspondent Matt Nesto explained that investigators for both the stock exchanges and for Citigroup, the firm that some are pointing fingers at for a so-called trader error, have narrowed it down to a futures index called the E-mini S&P 500. "A person familiar with the Citi investigation said one focus of the trading...

The White House briefing room might have been the calmest place in America during the Dow's knee-buckling, nearly 1,000-point plunge this afternoon. The dive, which came amid deepening fears that the European debt crisis will infect the United States, came, ironically enough, minutes after Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin had just exited the briefing after talking about regulatory reform -- but not Greece. The first word of the rout came from NBC's Savannah Guthrie, who, reading from her BlackBerry, informed White House press secretary Robert Gibbs that the market "has dropped 1,000" points.

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Greece's parliament has voted in favour of the hefty cuts and reforms proposed by the government to address the country's financial crisis. With 172 of 300 votes in favour, one report said a second vote would have to be passed for the bill to become law. The vote comes a day after three bank workers died in a petrol bomb attack as demonstrations over the planned austerity measures turned violent. The finance minister said the measures were the only way to avoid bankruptcy. But as the vote was held demonstrators gathered outside parliament to protest against the measures. Wednesday's deaths...

Think Dow 11,000 is a big deal? Think again. The Dow Jones industrial average briefly hit the milestone Friday for the first time in 18 months before closing at 10,997. But Wall Street analysts who study key stock index levels say all the attention paid to 11,000 is more like a big distraction. They worry that investors are ignoring another number at their peril: The surprisingly low volume of trading. As stocks have risen over the past year, the volume reflects the vulnerability of a rally riding on the shoulders of relatively few participants. And that's given pause even to...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks slumped Thursday after a rise in weekly jobless claims sent an alarm ahead of the big monthly employment report. The dollar's surge versus the euro pummeled dollar-traded commodities, while Treasury bond prices spiked, lowering corresponding yields, in a classic flight-to-safety move.

With the bond markets closed, all the attention today was on commodities and equities. Crude oil ended up 0.3% at $79.28 a barrel and gold futures hit a new record of $1119 an ounce today, nearly breaking the $1120 mark before dropping down to $1115. The three major indexes all ended higher. The Dow, which has been up every single day this month, ended at 10,293, up 47 points, the NASDAQ at 2166, up 16 points, and the S&P 500 clocked in at 1098, up 6 points. Energy and utilities took a lot of losses today, with Time Warner Cable...

OTTAWA (Dow Jones)--Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Thursday G20 countries have to coordinate planning stimulus exit strategies."That's important so that one country's banking system isn't advantaged over another country's banking system as we exit from this period of stimulus, which isn't going to happen for a while," Flaherty told reporters. He expects G20 finance ministers and central bank governors to discuss exit strategies at their weekend meeting in St. Andrews, U.K. He cautioned, "Not that it's time to implement exit strategies but that we coordinate our planning in terms of exit strategies." Regarding moral hazard when some banks are...

US workers, their retirement funds already clobbered by a decade-long flat-lining of the major stock market indexes, are facing the growing odds of another Lost Decade -- which would further tarnish their dreams of prosperous retirement. A number of financial pros are predicting just such a nightmare -- that the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 Index, into which many workers have invested their 401(k) cash, will march sideways for as many as another 10 years. "The country will grow at a slower rate over the next 10 years as Americans begin the long process of de-leveraging," said...

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--U.S. stocks rallied Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average pushing above 10000 for the first time in a year on better-than-expected quarterly reports from Intel and JPMorgan Chase, and as improved retail sales data lifted Caterpillar and a wave of other industrials. Since hitting a 2009 closing low of 6547.05 March 9, the Dow has tacked on 53% in the past seven months. For Wednesday, the index closed up 144.80 points, or 1.47%, at 10015.86, marking its biggest one-day gain since Aug. 31. The measure hadn't traded at 10000 since Oct. 7, 2008, and hadn't closed...

How many times have we heard President Barack Obama or high-ranking members of his administration lament the fact that the president "inherited" a recession? Quite a few, if anyone is keeping track. Now the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has broken through the 10,000-point barrier. But that begs the question given the inevitable credit Obama will get from the media and other supporters for this rally, should former President George W. Bush get some of the credit if Obama is so willing to blame him for the collapse? It's a question Neil Cavuto put to the test on his Oct....

A retail downgrade by Saks and larger than anticipated jobless filings, coupled perhaps with nervousness over Friday's jobs report (8:30am) led the market to a broad decline, which accelerated into fresh lows in the last hour.

It is only a number — the stock market equivalent of an appliance chain’s millionth customer, or the gazillionth hamburger served at McDonald’s. Still, the Dow, which closed up 124.17 points, at 9,789.36, on Monday, is within reach of 10,000. Who would have thought? At the depths of Wall Street’s crisis, when traders were despairing and shares of Citigroup were trading for just over a dollar, Dow 5,000 seemed a likelier prospect than this. But now, one of the most-watched measures of the financial world is on the cusp of jumping back to five-digit territory. That does not mean the...

The Wall Street Journal, which is also owned by Dow Jones publishing group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, reported over the weekend that the company was in discussions with potential buyers of the business. Goldman Sachs has been appointed to lead the talks. News Corp bought Dow Jones for $5.7bn (£3.45bn) in 2007 but was recently forced to write down $2.8bn of the purchase price after its publishing operations were hit by the fall in advertising. Potential buyers of the indices business have been named as Bloomberg, FTSE – which is a joint venture between the Financial Times Group...

Once in a while, we like to highlight the efforts of some very smart friends of ours. Bryan over at “I’m Not that Kind of Banker,” has put together the single best analysis of the current state of the stock market — at this point in time — that we’ve read in quite a while. An investment banker based in Washington State, Bryan can pick apart a market trend with the same kind of ease Einstein demonstrated in doing long division, we imagine. …What we can say with a reasonable amount of certainty is that “I’m Not a Banker” has...

Markets continued their drive upwards yesterday. The S&P index crossed over 1000 yesterday. The NASDAQ moved above 2000 and the Dow moved above 9200. Indices are down this morning. There is breaking economic data. Consumer spending was up .4% (inflation adjusted .1%) while income fell 1.3% in June. The data is out just in the last ten minutes and so it's difficult to guage just what effect it will have on the markets. Pending home sales for June will be out at 9 AM Central time. The consensus has .6% gain.

Wall Street has been cheating main street for years. We know it is happening because of several pieces of evidence. One that sticks out is that the markets frequently seem to go the opposite of what common sense, economics, fundamentals, etc. would dictate. While working on my car today (ironic), it came to me. All the pieces of the car have to work together to cause the common function of a given process of the car. And, in intelligence, it is the aggregate data that give you the final one answer as to what the plan is or what is...

There's breaking news. The Gross Domestic Product number came out and the economy contracted by one percent over the second quarter. (April through June) The consensus number was that the economy would contract by 1.5%. This is the most promising economic news in months. This is the fourth straight quarter of contraction which used to be a technical definition of a depression. (though most people don't consider that the definition anymore)

ISLAMIC INDEX: New index from Dow Jones will give investors exposure to 100 non-US Shariah compliant companies. (Getty Images)Dow Jones Indexes announced on Wednesday it has licensed the Dow Jones Islamic Market International Titans 100 Index to Javelin Investment Management, an investment adviser registered with the SEC. The blue-chip index will underlie the first Shari'ah compliant exchange-traded fund listed in the US - the JETS Dow Jones Islamic Market International Index Fund (JVS). The index measures the stock performance of 100 leading non-US companies that have passed rules-based screens for Shari'ah compliance. To determine their eligibility firms are screened based...

Where will the Dow Jones Industrial Average be on December 31, 2009? A Daily Poll.

The Dow Jones industrial average is adding Travelers Cos. and Cisco Systems Inc., dropping Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Corp. The announcement Monday of the changes to the 30 stocks that make up the best-known barometer of Wall Street comes as GM enters bankruptcy protection, a move that was widely expected. Dow Jones said Travelers, the property and casualty insurer and one-time division of Citicorp, would replace its former parent. Cisco, which makes computer networking gear, is filling the role left by GM after 83 years as part of the Dow. The changes take effect June 8.

Going blue chip: There's nothing wrong with being listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, of course. But Silicon Valley stalwarts Google and Cisco Systems may be headed for bigger things.They are being viewed as top contenders to enter the Dow Jones industrial average, now that the two constituents are trading below $2, making their status as blue chips tenuous, Reuters said.In recent weeks, six stocks on the Dow have tumbled below $10, and on Friday, Citigroup, once the world's most valuable bank, sunk to 97 cents. Analysts say Citigroup and automaker General Motors are most likely to be replaced. "I...

1. Origins: Charles Dow The Dow Jones Industrial Average (the DJIA or The Dow) is a stock market index. It comprises of stocks of select large companies and is used to gauge the performance of the whole stock market. The Dow was created by American journalist Charles Henry Dow on May 26, 1896, as part of his research into market movements. That explains the "Dow" in Dow Jones, but what about the "Jones" part? That was named after Dow's business partner Edward Davis Jones, a statistician (not related, as far as I could tell, with the current Edward Jones company)....