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Stocks in the U.S. slumped at the end of the week, including a dive of 318 points for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as traders caved in to worries about global stability and the health of various economies. Concerns about weak growth in China — a critical market for Western trade — melded with currency drops in countries such as India and Turkey, prompting investors to flee from stocks, which are viewed as riskier than bonds or gold. The S&P 500, a broad measure of the American market, lost 2% to 1,792 Friday, and the Nasdaq Composite slid 2.1% to...

Not sure if this is an adjustment or disaster. We need to stop the hemorrhaging by Monday.

U.S. stocks declined sharply on Thursday, with the Dow extending losses into a third session, after measures of U.S. and Chinese manufacturing disappointed and as Wall Street considered quarterly reports from companies including McDonald's and Netflix. Wall Street's drop stems largely from worries about China, "as far as economic growth is concerned, and the potential for it to lead to pressure on loans they have outstanding; that's weighing on the market," said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Banyan Partners. And, "earnings season is not proving all that much help right now. It's not terrible, but it's not outstanding. People...

What Are ETFs? In the simplest terms, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are funds that track indexes like the NASDAQ-100 Index, S&P 500, Dow Jones, etc. When you buy shares of an ETF, you are buying shares of a portfolio that tracks the yield and return of its native index. The main difference between ETFs and other types of index funds is that ETFs don't try to outperform their corresponding index, but simply replicate its performance. They don't try to beat the market, they try to be the market. ETFs have been around since the early 1980s, but they've come into...

The business of legal marijuana is booming in Colorado -- and investors are catching a contact high. Yes, there are pot stocks. Nearly all of them are thinly traded penny stocks available only on over-the-counter exchanges, but shares of companies that service the growing cannabis market have been blazing in recent weeks. Medbox (MDBX) is the latest example. The company provides products and services for businesses that dispense medication, such as pharmacies. It announced plans Tuesday to tailor its products for use in recreational and medical marijuana facilities. Shares soared 65%. (Medbox, for the record, is not a penny stock....

Investment & Finance Thread 2014 New Year(Jan. 6 - Jan. 13 edition) Anyone want more stuff or less stuff posted here please let me know.Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.  The list of everyone's links is here.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket.  2013 was an amazing year-- stocks up 30%+ w/ metals tanking like 40%.  Don't know about you but I spent most of it ready to bail out...

I spend a lot of time worrying about the next tech bubble. It's my job to worry, of course, and this year, worrying became a full-time occupation. Ever since Facebook's stock price rebounded this year to the level of its initial public offering, tech startups have seen an incredible run-up in valuations.

Investment & Finance Thread (Dec. 16 - Jan. 6 edition) Anyone want more stuff or less stuff posted here please let me know.Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.  The list of everyone's links is here.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket  Everyone's taking the holidays off so we'll resume thing next year and all the very best to you and yours!   Until then, this week's econ reports here, Last week's stocks: 

Investment & Finance Thread (Dec. 9 - Dec. 13 edition)Last week's stocks rebounded in shaky volume.    This week's econ reports here, earnings reports:   Anyone want more stuff or less stuff posted here please let me know. Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.  The list of everyone's links is here.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket

This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (Dec. 2 - Dec. 6 edition)---- work in progress.Last week's stocks saw new highs.  This week's reports include:Dec 2 ISM Index, Construction Spending, Auto Sales Dec 3 Truck Sales, MBA Mortgage Index, MBA Mortgage Purchase Index Dec 4 ADP Employment Change, Trade Balance, New Home Sales , ISM Services, Crude Inventories, Fed's Beige Book Dec 5 Challenger Job Cuts, Initial Claims, Continuing Claims, GDP - Second Estimate Q3, GDP Deflator - Second Estimate Q3, Factory Orders, Natural Gas Inventories Dec 6 Nonfarm Payrolls, Nonfarm Private Payrolls, Unemployment Rate, Hourly Earnings, Average Workweek, Personal...

In case you haven’t noticed, there has been a surge in market forecasts lately claiming that the recent run up in prices has resulted in a stock “bubble”. There is no universal definition of what actually constitutes a bubble, so we’ll settle for the vague description of “a condition where market participants drive stock prices well above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation.” The fear of a bubble, of course, is that when the euphoria ends, prices will fall to more pedestrian levels resulting in a significant loss for existing investors who don’t bail out first.Pundits...

What is driving the stock market to dizzying heights? Try stock margin accounts and Fed Monetary easing. Here is a chart of NYSE Member Firms Debit Balances in Margin Accounts and the Standard and Poor’s Index. margindebtspx And here is a chart of the SPX against The Fed’s Balance Sheet size. spxfedbal You must admit, there seems to be a pattern here. Particularly since real median household income seems to be shrinking (although house prices are rising). cs20realmedhinc Margin accounts + easy Fed money = bubbles.

The stock market may very well be overvalued right now. Indeed, with the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP +0.07% finally trading above the 4,000 level this week, the first time in 13 years, comparisons to the Internet bubble are perhaps unavoidable. Nevertheless, a sober assessment of the data shows that the market today is well less overheated than it was in December 1999, the first time this index traded above 4,000. In other words, whatever else you say about what’s happened over the last 13 years, at least some of the overvaluation that prevailed at the top of the Internet bubble...

This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (Nov. 25 - Nov. 29 edition)---- work in progress.Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.   The list of everyone's links is here.Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.

What exactly was happening one year ago and just six months ago in the stock market? We're asking that question today is because of the two charts we featured yesterday that we're showing side-by-side below, which look very similar to one another except for the very recent trajectory of stock prices: In the chart on the left, we're showing the change in the year-over-year growth rate of S&P stock prices with respect to the change in the year-over-year growth rate of expected future dividends per share. In the chart on the right, almost everything is the same as on the...

The Dow rallied more than 100 points to close above the 16000 mark for the first in history amid optimism the Fed will keep its foot firmly on the economic accelerator. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) rose 109 points, or 0.69%, to 16010, the S&P 500 (GSPC) advanced 14.5 points, or 0.81%, to 1796 and the Nasdaq Composite (IXIC) gained 47.9 points, or 1.2%, to 3969. Wall Street has rallied in a big way this year. The Dow is up more than 22%, and has rallied 145% since its bear-market low in March 2009.

This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (Nov. 18 - Nov. 22 edition)---- work in progress, under construction.  Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarketPing list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.  The list of everyone's links is here.There are soo many good ways of doing this,  by checking out the investment forums at Tradeking,   Scottrade, and TDAmeritrade & others they got all kinds of ways of link investors together.  The stockmarket thread  at usmessageboard.com has investors posting comments 2 or 3 times per month, but the one on Ameritrade's thinkorswim...

There’s a reason why a lot of the world’s top investors, like Warren Buffett, don’t invest in technology—it moves too fast. And it’s too hard to track whether the hot stock or idea of today will be worth anything in five years. Buffett famously references the auto industry when he talks about his aversion to technology stocks. There were hundreds of car companies in the U.S. during the early part of the 20th century, but only a handful survived and made investors any money over the long haul. The big question is, are we in a bubble right now? First,...

The Dow and the S&P 500 hit new highs on Friday for a sixth straight week of gains, as investors continued to take cues from Federal Reserve Chair nominee Janet Yellen, who told a Senate Committee it was too early to end the central bank's stimulus. Shares of Exxon Mobil Corp led the blue chip Dow index higher. They rose 2.2 percent to $95.27 a day after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc disclosed a new $3.45 billion stake in the second-largest U.S. company by market value, behind only Apple Inc [ID:nL2N0IZ2HD] Both the S&P and Dow capped a fourth straight...

Authored by Guy Haselmann of Scotiabank,FED – Encouraging the Melt-Up Trade, While Regulating Bubbles Away       The Fed moved ‘all-in’ in 2008/09 when it pushed rates to zero and embarked on QE. Since the Fed basically used its final chips via this action, it became trapped playing ‘this hand’ until the bitter end. The stakes are enormous and grow over time. The only way the Fed can ‘win’ is – as Yellen said today – “to do everything possible to promote a very strong recovery”. Tapering too soon could be calamitous toward this objective. Yet, the longer it continues, the...