Back to Quiet Stable Markets (For a Day)

Well I guess everyone is tired after the weekend–or traders simply can’t find any balony reasons to move interest rates and stocks much higher or much lower.  Watching markets way too closely we find modest moves up or down to be very relaxing–not a care in the world today (except the 10″ of fresh snow in my driveway and my snowblower is in the shop).

Probably the most interesting move in any stock, bond or commodity is the bounce in oil the last 2 days. There is no fundamental reason whatsover for crude to bounce–seems like more folks trying to pick a bottom. After the huge build of over 10 million barrels of oil last week one has to ask what they see that we don’t.  Certainly part of it is a dollar that has weakened a bit after Yellen made her dovish commentary last week (she speaks again this week–but not until markets are almost closed this coming Friday). This bounce gives the MLPs a little reason to bounce–more bottom feeders trying to catch a bottom.

We haven’t made a trade on a security in almost 3 weeks.  We noted in one of our personal accounts we have made only 1trade this year (so much for our trading discount). With extraordinary performance who cares—we sure don’t have to spend commission dollars just for the heck of it. As we mentioned–this is Goldilocks.

On the new issue front it is extremely quiet–we see lots of debt being sold in ‘private placements’, but virtually nothing happening in the public offering.  Without new issues we are holding cash that isn’t getting deployed–maybe we have to look harder and go ahead a deploy the cash in available issues.

There is nothing to speak of on the economic calendar this week that will be meaningful. I guess we have to wait for the Greece Finance Minister to say something stupid to have some excitement.