August 2013

Acronym Anxiety

I chalk this bullshit up to the late August nothing-to-do-ness that always takes hold of Wall Street. The second-stringers are manning the desks and those forced to stick around and write stuff begin to lose their minds in the surreal isolation of it all… Here’s John Authers at the Financial Times: Acronym anxiety is here….

Wall Street Knows a Bad Trade When it Sees One

Wall Streeters are conditioned to know a bad trade when they see one. They tend to view most life decisions through the prism of risk and reward, just as they do buy and sell decisions each day at the office. In today’s New York Post, we learn that at least one political action committee made…

This Week on TRB

Here were the most read posts on TRB this week, in case you missed them: Chart o’ the Day: Significance of 90% Down Days The Financial Media is not a toy to be used and discarded and then European stocks began to crush the S&P God hasn’t lost his sense of humor…  

A Lesson on Consumer Confidence

This morning’s University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Survey aka The Ann Arbor Housewive’s Report came in pretty weak… (Reuters) – U.S. consumer sentiment retreated in August from last month’s six-year high, though Americans were slightly more upbeat in their outlook than earlier in the month, a survey released on Friday showed. The Thomson Reuters/University of…

Mark Hulbert on Stocks in September

Mark Hulbert makes a nuanced point in his MarketWatrch column about the historical behavior of stocks during the month of September. On the one hand, he finds that this is really and truly the cruelest month… Let me first review the impressive statistics behind September’s terrible reputation. Since the Dow was created in 1896, it…