Author: Scott Hoffman

There was a fascinating (and frightening) article written by Christopher Elias for Thompson Reuters on re-hypothecation. If you don’t know anything about it here is a good place to start. Excerpt: …By way of...

Upon further review, the markets are more skeptical of the new EU debt deal. Moody’s says that it will review the rating of all countries in the EZ. They also said that the EU issue is getting to a critical point and that...

The EZ Summit has produced steps to move forward in fighting the sovereign crisis, but has not produced a major change in policy. The latest round of kicking the can down the road is enough to assuage the markets today –...

In this morning’s Swing Trader’s Insight update I wrote that following yesterday’s breakout sale in the gold futures, I would be interested in going long the gold futures if the trend reversed back up....

New Italian Prime Minister Monti is working on implementing a new austerity plan; markets are taking this as bullish news as they look forward to the EU summit on Thursday and Friday. The EU summit will likely be the...

A number of markets had breakout setups today, as you would expect on an unemployment report day. If you wanted to take the breakout setup trades early, there were some decent trades overnight. In the eMini S&P futures, a...

Treasuries were the flip side of stock index and Euro currency futures today as they had a big downside opening gap last night in response to the return of the “risk on” trade. T Bonds saw downside follow through...

Markets are focusing on strong retail sales reports to start out the holiday shopping season. This is reviving ideas that the US economy is due for a rebound. There’s also some Euro-optimism after a weekend meeting of EU...

Today was a great example of how a breakout move often results in a counter move in the following session as the market takes back the “excess” that breakout moves often create. Below is the daily chart or December...

There was downbeat news out of Asia last night. Japan saw weak exports in October and Chinese officials warned of slow global growth. In Europe, Moody’s warned about potential debt downgrades for France and the Bundesbank...