The trading day starts off down in China

The question for global stock prices is whether the morning’s declines on China’s markets build enough momentum to produce one of those rolling global corrections where falling prices in Asia lead to falling prices in Europe that lead to falling prices in the U.S. market that lead to another decline in Asian markets.

The odds for an earnings season dip just increased

Disturbing background for the third quarter earnings season that starts this week raises the odds for a dip on earnings news over the next few weeks. Wall Street analysts cut their estimates for 2011 earnings for the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 in September, according to Bloomberg. That’s the first decline in quarterly earnings estimates since June 2009.

An unexpected thing that could stop this rally

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Where does the rally go from here?

Why have stocks rallied so strongly in September? I don’t think it’s got anything to do with currently observable improvement in the economy. I think what we’re seeing is investors—mostly hedge funds—who had bet that the economy was going to sour reversing that bet to get at least neutral on the economy’s prospects over the next six months.

We all tend to look first for fundamental reasons for

Stocks finally take out the top of the trading range

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