This week is the last full trading week on Wall Street for the year, and it is packed with key economic and earnings reports. The data will help us sharpen our 2026 market outlook following a wild week for stocks that saw the S & P 500 close at a record high this past Thursday … Read more
The S & P 500 ran into a brick wall Friday and finished the week lower, just one day after closing at a record high. The rotation out of tech stocks, which supported the Dow , was on full display. The across-the-board rally on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the third … Read more
We’re in the final stretch of 2025 and entering the second week of the historically strong market month of December. Barring a calamity, the S & P 500 should be able to turn in a third straight year of gains. The index has advanced nearly 17% year to date. Whether it goes higher from here … Read more
Stocks eked out gains Friday and closed the week higher after the Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation gauge added to the case for an interest rate cut next week. For the week, the S & P 500 rose 0.3%, while the Nasdaq added nearly 1%. Both indexes logged back-to-back weekly gains. The Dow gained roughly 0.5%. … Read more
Chicken and egg? Cart before the horse? Six of one, half dozen of the other? After a while, you realize there isn’t a simple phrase to capture the linkages between alternative investments that cloud the landscape of money-making opportunities. What kind of alternative investments am I alluding to? They could be any number of things: … Read more
Earnings season is winding down as we kick off the last month of 2025. Despite many headwinds — persistent inflation, slowing global growth, a record 43-day U.S. government shutdown, and geopolitical conflicts — third-quarter results were largely positive. With 95% of S & P 500 companies in, 83% have outpaced earnings expectations, while 76% have … Read more
This sure has been one tough market these past few weeks. One day, stocks are rallying on renewed hopes of a December Fed rate cut. The very next day, they’re weighed down by worries of an impending AI bubble. It’s no surprise that the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) — widely known as the “fear index” … Read more
Whenever the stocks of companies that we think are attractive purely on their underlying business fundamentals start to sell off, we know we want to buy. The question is: When to buy? Valuation is the primary factor to consider. However, in a market sentiment-driven decline like we saw Thursday, valuation isn’t really the focus for … Read more
It was a volatile week for the stock market, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting an all-time high before pulling back. Wall Street pulled money away from Big Tech and into more defensive sectors, such as health care and financials. The end of the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown and expectations for interest rate cuts … Read more
CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday that Eli Lilly will soon be the first pharmaceutical company to reach a $1 trillion stock market value. Shortly after the open, shares topped $1,000 each for the first time. At session highs, the stock exceeded a $950 billion market cap. Shares would have to hit nearly $1,058 to reach … Read more