David Moenning's Daily State of the Markets: 4/30 Apr 30, 2009 09:54AM

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 ...


David Moenning's Daily State of the Markets: 1/07 Jan 7, 2009 09:40AM

Can Hope Spring Eternal?

Stocks once again managed to brush off a batch of pretty crummy economic news yesterday as hope for the future appeared to be the focus – at least for the time being.

With stocks sitting at the very tip top of the recent trading range, both teams are looking for some sort of a trigger to give them the edge in the new game. On the one hand, the bears have a steady stream of surprisingly discouraging economic news to lean on. Yet on the other hand, our heroes in horns have been able to put the “old news” label on just about every piece of data these days and hold their ground.

In the early going, it looked like the recent rally would continue yesterday. However, with trading desks now fully staffed, it wasn’t long before the warm and fuzzy feelings gave way to a ...


David Moenning’s Daily State of the Markets: 11/03 Nov 3, 2008 10:01AM

Meltups Are Fun

After enduring one of the most difficult months in history (for the record, October was the Dow’s worst month since October 1987), last week’s four-day melt-up of +14% certainly helped improve the mood. While there was a little falloff at the close on Friday and the volume wasn’t anything to write home about, it was awfully nice to see back-to-back W’s for the Bull camp. And seriously, doesn’t a loss of 16% for the month beat the heck out of the 25% thrashing we were staring at on Monday afternoon?

After the Dow pulled off its best weekly game since 1974, I think just about everyone will agree that melt-ups, regardless of how they are induced, are fun to watch. And speaking of being induced, it didn’t really take much to keep the bulls moving on Friday as the list of positives was impressive.

For starters, interbank ...