Trader Talk

The 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy is less than two months away. There will be many commemorations, many reflections on how downtown New York and the country has changed since then. But for the people who lived and worked downtown during that time and are still with us, this is also time to take

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), July 21, 2021. Brendan McDermid | Reuters A quarter of the way through earnings season, we are headed toward the best profit growth in over a decade.  One fourth of the S&P 500 has now reported second-quarter earnings.  Overall earnings are now expected

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE I have several friends in the restaurant business. For the past few weeks, I’ve heard the same story every weekend: business is fabulous, and we can’t get enough help. This week, several of those restaurant people asked me what was going on with these Covid

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE Earnings season begins with two major tailwinds:  sky high prices and sky-high expectations.  On paper, second quarter earnings looks like the mother of all earnings reports, with estimates having risen steadily for the past six months, from expected 45% growth in January to

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The floor of the New York Stock Exchange, which has been quiet in the past year, has suddenly come to life. Traders have been returning, restrictions have been relaxed so more visitors can come on the floor, and the IPO business is booming.

Traders on the NYSE, May 3, 2021. Source: NYSE Can you make an exchange-traded fund out of activist investing?  Earlier this month, Engine No. 1 came out of nowhere and won three board seats at Exxon Mobil after a six-month proxy fight. The company wants Exxon needed to significantly reduce emissions and move toward a

Gary Gensler Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler is fleshing out his thoughts on climate risk and human capital disclosure. The SEC recently concluded a public comment period on expanding corporate climate disclosures. It has also launched a climate and ESG enforcement task force. In a speech

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The Federal Reserve, which has played a big part in confusing the markets, may be helping to clear things up. What happened to the argument that inflation would blow up bond yields? So far, it has been wrong.  With bond yields lower, not

In this article STT Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE This will be a very tricky Federal Reserve meeting for traders, but it won’t be much easier even after the gathering. Even if the Fed adopts a best-case, stay-the-course-on-tapering-and-rate-hikes scenario at the end of its two-day meeting Wednesday afternoon,

Traders working at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), on May 19, 2021. NYSE Is the great value rotation over?  The S&P 500 is at a historic high, but investors who earlier this year overweighted their portfolios into reopening stocks like Caterpillar and banks, and away from tech and other growth stocks, appear to be

In this article MORN Trevor Williams Thematic tech investing is exploding in popularity. Everyone wants to invest in funds that own clean energy, cybersecurity, electric vehicles, e-sports, robotics, 3D printing, and cloud computing. But watch out, Morningstar warns: The majority of these funds do not outperform the markets, have high fees, high failure rates, and

Stock market krisanapong detraphiphat | Moment | Getty Images Do you believe you are, or can be, a successful day trader, buying and selling stocks on a regular basis?   Do you believe that you, or anyone you know, can successfully time the market, going in and out of the market, and consistently make profits?

Traders working at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), on May 19, 2021. NYSE Thematic tech is seeing big price declines, but most investors are not bailing out.  It’s been a brutal year for the formerly red-hot investment darling, “thematic tech” investing, a catch-all phrase for emerging tech sub-sectors like Cathie Wood’s Ark funds, clean

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), speaks during a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, July 30, 2013. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said he would be aggressively pursuing bad financial actors who were “playing with working families’

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The Federal Reserve may be trying to project a coherent vision on what it expects its policy on future rate hikes will be, but the market cannot seem to agree on what version of the Fed it wants to believe. Does it want

Traders on the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE This is a very powerful rally. The combination of surprisingly strong economic reports and even more surprisingly strong earnings reports is pushing broad swaths of the U.S. stock market to new highs. Even the technicians are impressed. “The vast majority of NYSE stocks are in intermediate-term

In this article PEP A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE Everyone knew earnings were going to be good, but this is really good. “There’s evidence every day that growth is clearly improving around the world, today from the US to Australia,” Ed Hyman, chairman and head of the

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The market is showing some signs of exhaustion, and with good reason.  Most major parts of the market have run up significantly in the past month.  But there is a growing chorus warning that we are at “peak everything.” That is, peak earnings

President Joe Biden addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., April 28, 2021. Doug Mills | Reuters If the stock market is considered a barometer of success, Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office is starting off with a bang…a big bang. Since the election, the S&P 500 is

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE The reopening story is now getting very real, at least for Wall Street. Today’s crop of earnings reports are chock-full of companies reporting earnings above expectations and, most importantly, raising guidance. Take steel maker Nucor, which reported what CEO Leon Topalian called the