Consumer Confidence Plunge Most In More Than a Year

Stocks are modestly lower as a result. This will be brushed off, I have no doubt!

Philly Fed Disappoints, But Wall St to Busy Celebrating to Notice

from Zero Hedge:

"A month ago we mocked the Philly Fed number which printed at an outlier level of 8.1, slamming expectations of a negative print, and sending algos into overbuydrive. A week ago we were validated when the annual revision brought that number down from 8.1 to 4.6. Today we get confirmation that the December print was a total farce, with a January Philly Fed print which is once again solidly in negative territory, or -5.8, which just happens to be the biggest miss to expectations of 5.6 in seven months. Yet while a month ago the huge beat was a reason for the robots to ramp stocks, today's miss is a reason to... ramp stocks even more. Why? Because moments before the disappointing announcement the Fed decided to inject even more liquidity in addition to the now daily unsterilized POMO, following the resumption of repos, which injected some $210 million in reserves into dealers. This is in addition to the $3 or so billion that today's POMO will add as stock purchasing dry powder for banks."

News Terrible As Wall St Rejoices

34 people killed in hostage crisis in Algeria.
Citigroup disappoints on both top and bottom lines.
B of A must increase loan loss reserves.
Boeing dreamliner grounded world-wide.
China loses its edge.
And futures rocket higher. Reality is irrelevant!

But "adjusted" unemployment claims the best in 5 years. Only the "unadjusted" figures are bad!

It's Deja Vu All Over Again!

This chart looks amazingly similar to the one yesterday at this time of day! We appear to be range-bound!

Bad News Is Good News On Wall St

Stocks obviously didn't slip for long! This is classic bubble behavior when clearly bad economic news sends stock higher! Dow up 37 points.

Stocks Dip, Begin to Rebound

The news is mostly bad today, but stocks are rebounding on the small amount of good news, ignoring all the bad news.
Germany has officially slipped into recession, with negative GDP in Q4. That sent stocks into decline throughout the night.
But then, retail sales for December in the U.S. was better than expected. Unfortunately, even that was mixed, with low-margin retail sales increasing more than expected, but high-margin electronics sales disappointing badly.
"As for the bad news: it was all in the Empires State Manfuacturing Index which missed expectations big, and in fact posted a decline from the abysmal November miss, revised to -7.30, and now down to -7.78, the sixth negative print in a row, on expectations of an unchanged print. This was the 5th miss in the series in the last 6 reports, the worst miss in 4 months, and the lowest number in 4 months." Zero Hedge

Stocks Slide Deeper Into Red

Stocks Dip, Weak Global Data

The debt ceiling debate is perhaps beginning to weigh on the financial markets again. Stocks are now at yesterday's lows during the day session.

If stocks close at these price levels (they won't), then stocks will be flashing a sell signal to me. I would need a confirmation tomorrow, but exhaustion appears to be in the cards.

Stocks Modestly Lower On Slow News Day

Here are the headlines. These don't seem particularly insignificant to me, but Wall St doesn't seem to think they matter much.

And here is the chart:

Unfortunately, commodities are beginning to surge again also. The elections must be over! Gee, you wouldn't guess that the Fed is printing infinite amounts of money again, would you?
Crude oil:

Corn:

It's a Disabled Nation!

More than 90% of all the people who go onto SSDI never go back to work. This program was supposed to be short term until people could recover and go back to work. There are now 8.83 million people so disabled, they supposedly can’t work. There are only 12 million officially unemployed people in the country.