Stock Market Blog -Nov 7th

The market reacted well to the elections, QE2 from the Fed, and a good monthly jobs report (unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6%). The market has been on a non-stop rally since it bottomed for the year back in July. It's likely that we'll see the trend continue to the end of the year, maybe after a small pullback (this rally is very extended right now, so I expect a small pullback).

Silver and Gold also continue to rally (new all time high for Gold), as well as most other commodities (oil, sugar, coffee, cotton, corn, soybeans, copper, to name a few!)

Even the 10 year Bond, and the Dollar were up this week!
Something has to give of course... all asset classes don't normally rally at the same time. Maybe we'll find out which one loses next week.

PETM and XEL hit an all time high this week (among many others).


New unemployment claims for the week were higher, rising to 457,000 (chart).
This week, four banks were shut down by the FDIC! (list).

Market indexes are all now higher than the April high...
April earnings disappointments caused a selloff...
But we've been moving higher since the July earnings reports.

Next week: (Economic reports link). Earnings season continues, with the following companies among those reporting:

Mon	PCLN, PAAS, SLW, RAX, LDK, VVUS
Tue	JASO, GOLD, SOLF
Wed	AAP, DRYS, CSCO
Thu	ANF, NVDA, DIS
Fri	PBR

Market commentary: Well, we got a big news week, and a big rally. The market is saying that it wants to go higher. The S&P500 took out the 1220 level (April high) that I mentioned in last week's post. Longer term I expect more up-side action, though we may get a brief pullback first.

Commodities (charts): -commodities rallied this week!
Oil prices were up, closing near $87 per barrel.
Natural Gas was mostly unchanged, closing just under $4.00.
Gold soared close to $1400, closing around $1397.
The 30 year Bond was down slightly, closing near $130'22.
The US Dollar index was down a bit after the Fed's QE2 announcement, closing around 77.

News:
Stocks end strong week at two-year highs
Federal Reserve to buy $600 billion in bonds
Bernanke: Not trying to increase inflation
Employers Add 151K Jobs
Bank stocks rally on dividend hopes
Starbucks Profit Rises 86% on Higher Store Traffic, Via Sales

Fannie Mae asks for $2.5 billion in new US aid
AIG cleans house; posts $2.4B loss for 3Q
GM to sell over $13 billion of shares

Avoid 'leveraged' ETFs which are in a 'down' trend!
Imagine 'compounding' your losses every day...