Trader Talk

New highs for stocks? The bull narrative is winning the argument, for now. The S&P 500 is about 1.5% from an historic high, and recent data may help make a run at that record. Friday’s nonfarm payroll report, with 196,000 new jobs in March, was above expectations and will go a long way toward quelling

Tradeweb Markets, an electronic trading platform backed by Blackstone, went public Thursday morning at $27 but opened on the Nasdaq at $34.26, a significant premium. Original price talk of 27.2 million shares at $24 to $26 was twice raised, eventually settling at 40 million shares at $27. “The IPO trend is definitely up, companies are

It’s financial literacy month, do you know where your retirement is? CNBC Chairman Mark Hoffman rings the NASDAQ opening bell today to kick off the special month, created in 2003 to teach Americans how to establish and maintain healthy financial habits. Americans can sure use help with retirement. Baby boomers, in particular, have not saved

The S&P 500 is starting off April with a bang, at its high for the year and now only about 2% from the old historic closing high of 2,930 on September 20th of last year. April is the best month for the Dow Industrials (up 13 straight years), and the third best month for the

We are ending the first quarter on a note of modest anxiety over lower Treasury yields, but investors should be very happy with their investment portfolios. It’s not just that the S&P 500, up 11.9 percent, is having its best quarter since 2012. Everything is up, and I mean everything, including stocks and bonds. The

“I think buying new offerings in a hot market is something the average investor should not think about at all.” said Warren Buffett on CNBC Thursday, when asked about buying into the Lyft IPO, which is scheduled to begin trading on Friday. I got a call from a trader friend Thursday afternoon, someone who’s been

So much for the rally. On Thursday, the S&P 500 got within 2.4 percent of its historic high only to tumble on Friday. We got mugged by slower global growth again. Remember the bull narrative: The Fed and the central banks have our back, the tariffs are going to go away, the Chinese are going

After months of waiting, the 2019 IPO pipeline will finally open on Thursday with Levi Strauss. It is a perfect moment for the long-stalled IPO market. Investors are salivating at the ocean of well-known names seeking to go public: The IPO market has continued to rebound since February, and the Renaissance Capital IPO ETF (IPO)

CEOs are again warning about slower global growth, particularly in Europe and China, and the question is whether this means the stock market is headed for another December-like tumble. Not so fast. Earnings may not be as bad as many fear. Sure, it seems bad now that executives from several big companies — Federal Express,

You have to hand it to the global fund managers. They’re a great bunch to play against. Every month, Bank of America Merrill Lynch conducts a survey of roughly 200 global fund managers. What the trading community wants to know is how long or short they are certain key segments of the market? Why? Because

It’s the triumph of indexing: Fund managers continue to trail their benchmarks. Active managers who claim that they would do better during periods of heightened volatility are going to have to find another argument. This week, S&P Dow Jones Indices released its annual report on how actively managed funds performed against their benchmarks. The conclusion

The S&P 500 closed up 2.9 percent for the week, its best so far this year. It’s now at the highest level since early October, after breaking through key resistance levels near 2815, where it failed several times. The S&P is now less than 4 percent from the old historic closing high (2,930 on September

Will Boeing ruin the breakout rally? This is an important moment for the markets. We are finally breaching the 2,800 level in the S&P 500 and have a shot at getting over 2,820. This is where five rallies have failed in the last six months, including ones in October, November, early December, late February and

It was some time in the first quarter of 2009, standing outside the NYSE, when I realized that my entire generation got scalded. I mean the baby boomers. I didn’t know it at the time — no one did — but March 6, 2009, was the intraday bottom for the stock market, when the S&P

Once again, we are seeing the usual hand-wringing over the fact that after a 17 percent rally from the December low, some of the stock market’s sector leaders are meeting resistance. Leadership groups like semiconductors, the Russell 2000, banks and industrials have been weaker in the last couple weeks and with good reason. The markets

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell sidestepped a verbal hand grenade in his Congressional testimony on Tuesday. Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, asked Powell where he stood on recent trial balloons to restrict the ability of corporations to buy back stock. Powell reflected for a moment and said that the allocation of capital has always been left

We are still in the longest bull market on record, yet the entire trading community seems convinced the bull market is about to roll over. If analyst estimates are trustworthy, we are on the verge of an earnings recession, that is, two consecutive quarters where earnings growth goes negative compared to the same period the

The markets are starting off with a somewhat defensive edge on Tuesday, but the overall trend has been remarkably positive. So, why are so many people cautious about the markets? You wouldn’t be cautious looking at the details. Breadth as measured by the advance/decline line has been improving almost every day since the Dec. 24

Rising costs and lower prices are beginning to eat into profit margins. Analysts and strategists are puzzling over an unusual development: 2019 earnings estimates are dropping fast — they are down to a measly 0.5 percent for the first quarter, but revenue estimates are barely changed at 5.6 percent. The likely explanation: a combination of

Now that the IPO market has reopened, traders are hopeful that an enormous pile of new stock offerings can be pushed through the door in 2019. IPO observers are optimistic, and with some justification: There is an outside chance 2019 could be an all-time record for initial public offerings, passing even the legendary 1999 and

The markets got the two things they wanted most from the Fed: a reiteration that it would be “patient” raising rates and that, if necessary, it would make changes in unwinding its balance sheet. It seems to be signaling the balance sheet will be much larger than anticipated. Never mind the Fed did not change

Let’s be blunt. The earnings guidance has been lousy in the last 24 hours, yet the stock market is taking it all in stride. What’s up? This is the time of year when most companies roll out earnings guidance for the full year, and the overall trend has been the numbers moving lower. In the

The government shutdown is beginning to seriously affect the business of Wall Street, in particular the critical issue of IPOs. If the government does not reopen soon, a serious backlog in initial public offerings could develop. Even if the shutdown ends soon, there is already likely some collateral damage: “I could easily see this pushing

The big concern as earnings season began was the outlook for this year’s growth. The big stocks reporting on Wednesday have all provided reassuring guidance for 2019, including Dow components United Technologies and IBM, both above consensus guidance, and Procter & Gamble, which was in line with guidance on strong sales. All three stocks were

It was in the early 1990s, after three or four years as a correspondent at CNBC, that it became obvious to me: the vast majority of active managers rarely beat their benchmarks. Sure, there was Bill Miller (Legg Mason Value) and Peter Lynch (Fidelity Magellan Fund), but they were distinguished by their rarity: they were

Barring a major decline on Friday, the S&P 500 will record its fourth consecutive weekly gain. The markets are resetting. I have said this countless times: The stock market trades on estimates of a future stream of earnings, usually six months to a year out. At the end of December, the market was acting like

The rally may be getting ahead of itself. Downside risks are increasing. The good news: Trade talk rumors are giving another leg-up to an already-healthy rally. The bad news: The markets are now pricing in a favorable trade deal, and the markets are increasingly vulnerable to a disappointment or a “sell the news” situation. The

The markets have a new fear: FOMO. In the past few days, as we have reached the heart of earnings season, the markets have again resumed their upward drift. In discussions with traders, there is a new fear on the Street. It is not fear of the government shutdown. It is not fear of a

The government shutdown is starting to get the IPO markets nervous. There is a robust pipeline for initial public offerings in 2019: Already, 160 companies have filed to go public with the SEC, according to Argus, including big names like the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft. There is also a backlog of companies that decided

It’s Day 21 of the partial government shutdown. That ties the record for a standoff set in the 1995-96 budget battle between President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. We are now seeing a rash of analyst notes warning that this will soon start to affect different businesses. American Airlines shares fell Thursday because