Bull Market

Income-starved investors are helping prop up the long-in-the-tooth bull market (up 220% since 2009) on the S&P 500. How else can you explain the support the S&P 500 has found in the face of a really mediocre earnings season? The only way is if investors think it’s a…

I think this year’s bull market is still alive, but it will take good corporate earnings and visibility to carry it forward. We’ve had a really good run up until now and the current price consolidation is not unexpected. I want to reiterate that the stock market is…

Remember this summer when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had a couple of 400-point loss days and we heard so many stock advisors and analysts tell us we were headed straight into a second recession…that corporate earnings would plummet? Stocks fell 20% from their May 2, 2011, high…

Investor sentiment is fragile and the stock market’s been volatile, but the trading action over the last little while has revealed one big consolidation, not a breakdown in the main stock market indices. What’s holding the market around 1,200 on the S&P 500 Index is the expectation for…

Over the last two years, the 105% advance in the S&P 500 recovered 697 points of the 909 points lost between October 2007 and March 2009. In percentage terms, the S&P 500 so far has recovered 77% of the 909 slide. Comparably, the NYSE Composite recovered 73% of…

There are a lot of good trades out there in this kind of market—some of them are value trades, while others are momentum opportunities. With sentiment in the broader market quite positive, the likelihood of further capital gains in the main stock market averages is strong. After many…

The bias towards stocks remains bullish, as the market continues on a two-year rally from the March 2009 low. The trend of the NYSE new-high/new-low ratio has been edging higher, with 161 of the last 167 sessions flashing a bullish sign. In the technology area, 119 of the…

I have a real sense that this decade will be characterized as the decade of the commodity. The real resource. The real goods. Right now, we have across-the-board price strength in precious metals (not just gold and silver, but a whole range of other metals); oil prices are…

The stock market still wants to go up, even though investors are wary of the recent run-up (because it’s lasted so long.) But there isn’t much else for institutional and individual investors to invest in. Bonds and money markets pay hardly anything and commodity prices look stretched. Aside…

You would have to be living in a cave not to notice the bull market in commodities. As with any bull market, the logical question is whether it is sustainable or not and, if it is sustainable, what is its lifespan? Some of the top economists in North…

Gold has edged higher in each of the past nine years and it looks like we will soon see a decade-long bull market for the precious metal. We here at Lombardi Financial turned bullish in 2002-2003, and have remained so ever since. Although at times the bullion has…

The "QE2" was launched two weeks ago. But it is not the legendary ocean liner "Queen Elizabeth 2" returning to active service. QE2 is the second wave of quantitative easing (QE) that the Fed has introduced by purchasing U.S. Treasuries. Billions of additional dollars will be created out…

Most people like to be right. So do I, but not about predictions I made about a year ago about the economic environment that we find ourselves in these days. For months now, I've written in "Profit Confidential" about deflationary risks and my general lack of faith in…

By Michael Lombardi, CFP, MBA — Today's Profit ConfidentialcolumnDo you believe in luck?I do. And today could be our lucky day. You see, only a year ago, the financial world was coming to an end. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to 6,440.08 on March 9, 2009. Thousands…

— "Calling the Trend" Column, by George Leong, B.Comm. One of the most significant advantages of employing options is the use of leverage; that is, you can increase your exposure to stocks with less initial upfront capital required. Say you're short-term neutral but long-term bullish on stocks --…

— "Ahead of the Street" Column, by Mitchell Clark, B. Comm. There are a lot of standout companies that have recovered tremendously well on the stock market. They've done so since the most recent financial crisis, but also since the stock market bubble burst in 2000. A lot…

— "Ahead of the Street" Column, by Mitchell Clark, B. Comm. In the third week of August, I wrote in this column about an exciting small Chinese company that's growing its business providing traffic-management technology to big Chinese cities. The company's name is China TransInfo Technology Corp. (NASDAQ/CTFO)…