ALB

Will a 5% drop bring out the buy on the dippers? Not, I’d argue, until the People’s Bank makes a move

Will a 5% drop bring out the buy on the dippers? Not, I’d argue, until the People’s Bank makes a move

The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell another 1.70% today and it’s now down 3.94% from the September 2 high. As the index dropped last week (again) and over the weekend, lots of Wall Street money managers said Hey, stocks were over-valued and news from Beijing and Washington (and places in between) is negative, but if stocks drop 5% we will be buyers. It looks like might get to test that conviction sooner than anyone expected. Which way will things break on another decline?

So far it’s just a typical September slump

So far it’s just a typical September slump

I found myself humming “I scare myself” this morning as the market continued its September selling. The Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks song pretty much sums up the market action this morning. We all know that stocks go down in September so we’re sending stocks downward. And we all know that September 17 is the Big Bad Day in the month so it’s unreasonable to expect a turn in sentiment before that date. But so far, I’d note, the selling seems “orderly” with the usual candidates bucking the trend and showing up in the green. It’s when those still in the green stocks start tumbling that I’ll really start to worry.

Senate passes infrastructure bill heavy on traditional road, rail, and water spending–so guess which stocks went up today?

Senate passes infrastructure bill heavy on traditional road, rail, and water spending–so guess which stocks went up today?

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that the Senate passed today–roughly half of that represents new spending–still faces a tough go in the House of Representatives where progressive Democrats have criticized the measure as light on dollars to fight global climate change. That spending has been pushed into a second infrastructure bill, which would also include money for expanding Medicare and improving access to childcare among other “social” infrastructure spending, which the Senate actually took up today. Most political pundits think that efforts to pass a “social” infrastructure bill using reconciliation will be enough to secure all the votes needed to pass the traditional infrastructure bill in the House. The bill passed today would include more than $110 billion to replace and repair roads, bridges and highways, and $66 billion to boost passenger and freight rail. The plan includes an additional $55 billion to address problems in the U.S. water supply such as continued use of lead pipes despite conclusive evidence that lead in water pipes leads to cognitive impairment in children. It allocates $65 billion to modernize the country’s power grid and $7.5 billion to build out a national network of electric-vehicle charging stations. The bill earmarks $47 billion to respond to wildfires, droughts, coastal erosion, heat waves and other climate crises.