Trader Talk

Alex Gorsky, Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, rings the opening bell to celebrate the 75th anniversary of his company’s listing at the New York Stock Exchange, September 17, 2019. Brendan McDermid | Reuters Johnson & Johnson surprised investors with a modest dividend increase of 6.3%, followed by Procter & Gamble, which raised its

JPMorgan kicks off earnings season on Tuesday. The bad news: Short-term guidance will be very ugly.   But there’s some good news:  1) The Securities and Exchange Commission has told corporations that this earnings season is not routine and has encouraged companies to provide forward-looking guidance, and not be concerned that the information may change rapidly.

Charging Bull Statue is seen at the Financial District in New York City, United States on March 29, 2020. Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images The week started with a roar. At the open Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up almost 10% for the week. Investors were positively giddy about three events: 1)

Art Cashin David A. Grogan | CNBC Art Cashin, head of floor trading for UBS, has been a beloved market commentator for many decades and a regular commentator on CNBC for more than 20 years. Cashin was in a car accident in early February (he was not driving) and has been recuperating. We spoke to

A barista packs a coffee for online sales at a Luckin Coffee store in Beijing, China July 17, 2018. Jason Lee | Reuters Here we go again. It sounds outrageous: The chief operating officer of Luckin Coffee, the largest domestic coffee chain in the China, was accused by his own company of fabricating much of

The entrance to a Macy’s department store. Jeffrey Greenberg | Universal Images Group | Getty Images Macy’s is being dropped from the S&P 500, and in a sign of how far the fortunes of the retail space have fallen amid the coronavirus-related shutdowns, it is not being demoted to the mid-cap S&P 400, it’s being

George Milling-Stanley has sometimes been referred to as the “godfather” of the gold business.    While at the World Gold Council, he was one of a small group that helped create the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) in 2004, now the world’s largest gold exchange-traded fund with over $50 billion in assets.  He is now chief gold

The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), has become one of the most widely watched indicators of market sentiment in the world.  In theory, it works on a simple principle: It is a measure of the stock market’s expectation of volatility over the following 30 days based on near-term S&P 500 index options, both puts and calls. 

A man cleans up on the trading floor, following traders testing positive for Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 19, 2020. Lucas Jackson | Reuters There was considerable trepidation among trading desks over the weekend as many in California, New York, and Massachusetts were told to

For everyone trying to figure out what S&P 500 earnings will be in 2020, here’s a sobering comment from Joseph Wolk, Johnson & Johnson’s chief financial officer: “One thing I know for certain is we’re going to be 100% precisely wrong.” Wolk made the comment  to The Wall Street Journal in reference to earnings guidance,

A pedestrian walks past the Federal Reserve building on Constitution Avenue in Washington on March 19, 2019. Leah Millis | Reuters The Federal Reserve pulled out another series of bazookas today, including a flurry of programs to buy more Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities.  But one move that surprised many was the decision to buy corporate

Traders, some in medical masks, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 20, 2020 in New York City. Trading on the floor will temporarily become fully electronic starting on Monday to protect employees from spreading the coronavirus. The Dow fell over 500 points on Friday as investors continue to

Call it part of the grand blame game:  Markets are down big, so it must be someone’s fault.  Exchange traded funds.  High-frequency traders.  Short sellers. In Europe, they have already figured out whose fault it is:  Short sellers!  In the past week, several European countries, including Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Greece–have banned short selling