David Moenning

Don’t Fight the Tape?

When I got started in the business of the stock market back in the early 1980’s, the first two Wall Street-isms I learned were “Don’t fight the Fed” and “Don’t fight the Tape.” The idea behind each of these beloved clichés is that it rarely, if ever, pays to argue with Ms. Market or the folks that control the purse strings.

Perhaps the other big message to be taken out of these two phrases is that when dealing with the stock market, the words ‘could,’ ‘should,’ and ‘would’ should be removed from your vocabulary. You see, as an investor your primary job is to keep your portfolios in line with what the market IS doing instead of what you or someone else thinks it ought to be doing.

In fact, the reason I began penning my morning missive was to make sure that I kept myself ...

Changing The Rules After The Game Has Started?

I have spent the better part of the last two weeks talking about the idea that we’ve seen the nadir in the banking crisis and as such, that there is a very good chance that we’ve also see the worst of the Bear market. But, this morning, I’d like to play devil’s advocate and explore one possible way that I could be wrong. Cutting to the chase, when I looked the reason why stocks pulled back on Friday, I became a little concerned.

While politicians will be undoubtedly act like politicians and I completely understand that their primary job is to keep getting elected and to keep their party in power, what is going on right now in Washington over the AIG bonuses is borderline embarrassing.

Frankly, I am reticent to broach the subject of politics because my opinion on the goings ...

Just about the time the bulls appeared to be poised to make a break for it to the upside, a batch of very big numbers from a variety of sources apparently caused them to lose their nerve. One might have thought that getting some details on the banking situation would have been a plus for the market this week. However, the bottom line is that it is still tough to look ahead when faced with the type of numbers we got yesterday.

For starters, while everybody knew that General Motors (GM) was going to lose money – a LOT of money – when you see an earnings report like this one, it takes your breath away. We won’t bore you with the gory details, but when a company the size of GM loses $9.65 per share, you know there are some very big numbers, as well as some very big ...