Stock Market

You may have heard that the stock market has been very volatile recently, with several days of significant declines. The drops in the US market on Monday, February 5th and Thursday, February 8th were especially large, around 4%, depending on the index. This followed a decline on February 2nd of a bit over 2%. To add [Learn more…]

There has been a lot of talk in the press about stock market volatility this year. During the last week of January and the first week of February, there was talk of a “correction” (a 10% decline in the stock market). The US stock market (represented by the S&P 500, SPY in the chart  below) [Learn more…]

Stock Market at Record Highs – What Now? The stock market has been rising fairly steadily for some time. Depending on the newspaper you read, or the analyst you follow, this “bull market” has been going since March of 2009, or September of 2011. As the “nominal” columns in the table at right indicate, the [Learn more…]

The current credit crises in both Europe and in the US are “sovereign” crises: they reflect investor concerns about government ability to repay debts. Investor concerns are clearly present in declining stock prices and stock market volatility. Stock market volatility is likely to continue until governments resolve both sovereign credit crises. The next several months [Learn more…]

Yesterday, world stock markets declined significantly. The S&P 500 lost 60 points, or nearly 5%. Other US stock indices had similar losses. International markets had mostly smaller declines (3-4% in Europe, 0-2% in Asia). Today, Asian and European stock markets lost roughly enough to make up the difference with yesterday’s US market declines (although European [Learn more…]