Financial Update #2. Week of September 21, 2009

Good Morning Everyone and Happy Tuesday! It’s hard to believe the stock market is rallying again today, but it’s true. After losing just over 40 points yesterday, the Dow has recouped all of that plus some. We lost a little ground on pricing yesterday, even with the losses in equities, and we’re losing a bit more again today. Each week we wait for the correction, but there seems to be plenty of money out there for traders to spend, and each dip is met with buying up those deals.

There’s a lot of talk about the weak dollar today and that is creating a boon for commodities. Gold hits another record today at $1,016 an ounce. This is the same pattern that happened just before the dot com bust several years ago. The Feds are meeting today and are due to release their decision on interest rates tomorrow late morning. There are no surprises expected in either the decision to change rates or in their comments afterwards. I mean really, what else would they say? The worst seems to be behind us, financial markets are stabilizing, we see encouraging signs in certain sectors of the economy. Our national economy is weak but not at the bottom, and we are in for a long recovery. Same ‘ol, same ‘ol . . . and thus we have general calm in stock and credit markets today.

Home prices for July saw a minor increase of .3%, not quite the .5% analysts were expecting, but a good sign. Of course, it is in the middle of Summer and we’re only comparing that number to the dismal number reported the month previous. The Treasury is auctioning off a batch of 2 year notes today, so we may have some movement in credit markets from this event – the announcement is due in about 10 mins. More than likely, all markets will float along today and tomorrow until the Fed decision is released, and even then there probably won’t be any major reaction.

I will be in the office all day today. Our jumbo products are really knockin’ it out of the park right now. Call me here or email me if I can help you out in any way, and have a terrific Tuesday!