The Market On Thursday

  Good morning. It is 41 degrees and ever so slightly clearing here in Upstate NY. Early this morning we experienced very strong winds in this part of the world. They are reporting winds as high as 70 mph in Massachusetts this morning as well. I feared we would lose power, but amazingly nothing happened. There remains the tiniest remnant of snow, I'd say the ground is 99.7% snow free. Regardless it's nice to be heading into February and see a return of the light.

  At 8:20 a.m. E.T. futures are flat and the price of oil per barrel is down. The market is poised to open slightly lower.

  The bull market of January halted on Wednesday as the government released figures on a slightly shrinking economy with the GDP down to a negative.1% non growth. Austerity measures as we know are the worst possible way to work with the economy now, yet the GOP in its utterly fool headed way, continues to push austerity. One must assume this is occurring in an attempt to win the election in 2016. It's a hey, let's wreck the economy and blame everyone but ourselves idiot move.

CNN: Stocks: Focus on jobs after growth shock

The Dow is up more than 6% so far in January...

...the Federal Reserve said economic growth had paused.