Is a Bull Market on the Horizon?

(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.

Dow lost 14.1% in Oct., but that pales against 30.7% in Sept. 1931

(NEWSER) - It would be hard to overstate the impact of the past 2 months on those who work and invest in the stock market, Ben Steverman writes for BusinessWeek. The crisis has surely spurred many investors to reevaluate the risks, but is it a game-changer, historically speaking? Although it was steep, the Dow’s October decline of 14.1% is smaller than 15 other months on record. More»

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»

Study pinpoints role of bullish hormone in boorish traders

(NEWSER) - The buying and selling of the world's wealth is at the mercy of aggressive men and their hormonal fluctuations, neuroscientists have discovered. While that doesn't come as a big surprise, the study isolates the major role that testosterone plays in making boorish traders exceptionally bullish—and the part the hormone cortisol plays in slumps, reports the Daily Telegraph. 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