Dow average surges to record high, driven by higher profits
By The Associated Press - Tuesday, March 5, 2013 - 0 Comments
NEW YORK, N.Y. – The Dow is closing at a record, beating the previous high it set in October 2007, before the financial crisis and the Great Recession.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 126 points, or 1 per cent, to 14,253 Tuesday, beating its previous record by 89 points.
The index is up nearly 9 per cent this year, capping a remarkable comeback. The Dow has more than doubled since hitting a 12-year low in March 2009.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 14 points, or 1 per cent, to 1,539. The S&P is also within striking distance of its record close of 1,565.
The Nasdaq gained 42 points, or 1.3 per cent, to 3,224.
Three stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was light at 3.3 billion shares.
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Running of the bulls
By Chris Sorensen - Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
Why some experts believe this is the start of a once-in-a-generation boom
Scott Olson/Getty
Ralph Acampora has nearly 50 years of experience as a stock market technician—someone who attempts to predict future stock movements by studying their historical patterns. But he says he learned one of his most important lessons not by poring over data on a powerful computer, but while eating dinner 43 years ago at Delmonico’s, a Lower Manhattan institution that traces its roots to 1827. He was seated next to a 70-year-old named Kenneth Ward, then one of the oldest market technicians on Wall Street.
Acampora, a founding member of the Market Technicians Association, asked Ward which 20th-century market had been most difficult to grasp, saying he figured it must have been the crash of 1929. But Ward replied in a gravelly voice, “Naw kid, that was a lay-up. Don’t get me wrong. We lost a lot of money, but the most difficult market I ever worked was in the 1960s.” Acampora was perplexed. Other than the “flash crash” of 1962, the Dow Jones Industrial Average—an index that tracks 30 U.S. blue chip companies—spent the rest of the decade marching to new heights. “I said, ‘But Mr. Ward, the market was going up.’ And he said, ‘It sure did, young man, but it rolled over everybody. And that’s because nobody believed it.’ ” Continue…
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Turn out the lights…
By Steve Maich - Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 4:21 PM - 1 Comment
the panic’s over….For a day at least.
But watching the action on the stock…the panic’s over….For a day at least.
But watching the action on the stock market today I was reminded of what a smart trader once told me.He said that if you’re looking to find a market bottom, you look for a day of furious back-and-forth trading, in which the market can’t seem to make up its mind on a direction. (Today certainly fit that description.)
He said you’re looking for a swing of around 500 points on the Dow, between the intraday trough and the intra-day peak. (Today’s swing was just shy of 600 points.)
And he said you want to look for a day that ends on a pretty-strong up tick, with a lot of buyers right near the close. (The Dow was up 410 points today, and about 300 of those points came in the final hour of trading.)
I am not calling a bottom here. I’m just passing this along for the sake of interest. It’ll be interesting to see if this guy’s approach to spotting a bottoming market holds up. In my gut I don’t believe this is the bottom. Everyone seems to agree this is the “worst market crisis since the Great Depression”, but the markets have only fallen about 21% from their highs.
