A combination of factors ranging from the recent rise in oil prices to concerns over earnings and overall higher rates caused a pullback in stocks. |
Cash is no longer a four-letter word. |
Earlier this week, we came within a whisker of multiyear highs for the S&P 500. But the market still has a lot of headwinds. We're still near the upper end of a trading range. |
Geopolitical wise, it's just more of the same. People are resigned to the fact that we're going to war. It's just a matter of under what pretext we do it. |
He also spoke optimistically about the economy, so the bond market is now pricing in a 100% chance of the Fed funds rate rising to 5%. |
He gave no sign that the Fed is almost done. |
I wouldn't read too much into this. |
Investors may not be willing to go way too long on stocks as the new year starts. At the same time, there are so many hedge funds in this market that they may be selling some stocks to cash in gains after November's rally. |
It all depends on whether we go down the unilateral path or the multilateral one. If the U.S. goes to war alone, they're going to smash this market. If we get a resolution passed we're going to see a nice rally. |
It may just be some pre-Fed asset allocation or positioning. I haven't seen any news to account for this. |
It's basically technical stuff rather than anything fundamental. The market has been showing signs of fatigue here. |
It's mostly sitting on your hands waiting to see what the Fed announcement is so we can start talking about something else. We need to see some confirmation that the economy is showing signs of improvement. |
Markets are back to where they were a couple of weeks ago. |
Noone questions why we were so crazy the first week of January, we're giving back some of the fluff rally. |
Some company earnings have been good, but we had large retailers in the past couple of days warning about a slowdown in sales. That is enough to get the market a bit concerned with a possible slowdown, ... Add higher interest rates to that mix and what you have is the housing sector and financial stocks suffering. |