Coming Up On Wall Street

Good morning. We are having significantly nice weather and temperatures here in Upstate NY, consecutive days of cold nights and clear, sunny, and pleasantly cool days. Allegedly the heating specialists call these 'fringe' days. Some of the more complex heating systems in larger institutions are not quite sure what to make of the wide temperature swings on fringe days. The automatic temperature thermostats can get moody.

The snowball that we have referred to as the Eurozone debt crisis is gathering size. The majority of losses in the equities market are attributed to a steady flow of poor economic news out of Europe. The DOW is presently at 11,231.78 and one can speculate that the 11K to 10K threshold will be crossed. The most salient quote that I have read on the crisis refers to politicians trying to buy time until European countries install their harsh austerity measures satisfying the appetites of the elite banking conservatives and stressing the lives of the ordinary citizens in countries like Greece, Portugal, and Italy.

Important economic data from the USA will also come out next week, data on home sales, home pricing, consumer confidence (one of the uglier binomial nomenclatures in the English language), and employment. Next Friday will be December 2nd and the government will be releasing monthly jobs data.

One suspects that the week will bring a tug of war between the ongoing Eurozone crisis news and the important US economic news. The temptation to write down a prediction is strong but always flawed. In spite of this I generally default to pessimism with the market, and so I would predict the Eurozone crisis continues to dominate and takes the DOW lower into the 10K range.

Reuters: Europe bond yields to keep stocks spellbound

With the specter of rising yields, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium and Spain are holding debt sales next week. The direction of bond yields will determine the direction of equity markets.


As the latest reminder from markets to politicians that they are running out of time, Belgium's credit rating was downgraded by Standard & Poor's.


Some of the most important U.S. economic monthly data will be released next week...