Volatile Market Hooked on Testosterone

(NEWSER) - The Dow has soared a whopping 30% since March 9, but Andy Kessler doesn’t think the good times are here again. “This sure smells to me like a sucker’s rally,” he writes in the Wall Street Journal. Earnings aren’t up. The market is just responding to three government actions:

• The “stress tests” have made nationalizations seem unlikely.
• With the Fed’s rate at close to zero, only stocks offer decent returns.

Wall Street is facing one of its worst bear markets since World War II

(NEWSER) - An increasingly familiar Wall Street phenomenon—a three-digit swing in the Dow, usually down, in the final hour of trading—is a direct result of population growth in one species: bears. Margin calls are forcing panicked sell-offs, it's true, but the situation is more complicated than that, experts tell the New York Times. More»

Lower rates and commodity prices and stocks that looks cheap could trigger a run

(NEWSER) - Apocalyptic attitudes abound, but weed through the financial doom and gloom and you'll find a few economists who think we've bottomed out, and that a bull market is up next, writes Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. The Dow has dropped 34.6% in the last year, but recent signs—bargain-basement interest rates, yesterday's coordinated rate cut, reduced commodities prices—point to a turnaround, say some. More»

A look at reliable indicators that the bear market is ascendant

(NEWSER) - After reaching a high in mid-July, the Dow has taken a sharp downturn. But how do you know when the bloom is off the rose? Here are Money magazine's five signs that usually precede a fall:

1. Sudden surge in oil prices
2. Treasury yields run up