The White House press release on the One Big Beautiful bill.

Happy 4th of July!

Sweeping legislation reshapes U.S. fiscal policy with major tax relief, healthcare reforms, and immigration enforcement investments. With a party-line vote, the bill has received strong criticism and high praise. How will it effect you? Read more here.

We saw the first half of the year end with the following items – a trade war, a real war with bombs dropped in the Middle East, plus a barrage of insults hurled by the president of the United States at the head of the Federal Reserve.

The first day of trading for the second half of the year looked like a return to the 1980’s as the old-time stocks that have done the worst this year – pharmaceuticals, retailers, casinos, builders and the rest of the weak items – all of a sudden caught fire and did well with the result that the Dow ended a strong day with a 400 point advance to 44,495 which left it within 1% of its all-time high. This was due to gains in AMGN, AXP, HD, HON, MCD, MRK, NKE, UNH and even AAPL which is starting to show pulse from low levels. It has now been higher for four straight days and seven out of the last eight.

Despite an afternoon dip into negative territory, the higher market then resumed its upside run to get the S&P and Nasdaq to new record high closes on Friday. This was another milestone in the market’s remarkable recovery from a springtime plunge caused by fears that the Trump administration’s trade policies could harm the economy.

After two powerful upside days, the market took a deep breath after a nominally higher start and ended mixed, but still within range of record highs.

The market did on Friday the same thing that it did the previous trading day which was on Wednesday, namely start very higher and then ended mostly lower, such as the Dow getting to an early 260 point gain but slipped to a final 35 point close to 42,206 led by AAPL of all things in addition to financials such as AXP, GS and JPM.

The highly anticipated, but no surprise at the results, finished with the market selling off from its best earlier levels and ending narrowly mixed. The Federal Reserve eventually said that it may cut interest rates twice this year, though it is far from certain about that.

After a nice start to the week on Monday, stocks yesterday slumped under the weight of another jump for the price of oil. It was a return to form for financial markets after worries about Israel’s fighting with Iran had seemed to calm a bit the previous day.

After Friday’s downside disaster, the market resumed its winning ways yesterday, as prices fell and the Dow gained 317 points to 42,515 led by advances in xxxxxxxx. The S&P gained 56 to 6033 as the following groups did well.

How many times have I mentioned that the VIX was too low in the 16/17 area for stocks to continue to proceed higher, and this is what we saw during Friday’s downside disaster, as the concern was that escalating violence following Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear and military targets could damage the flow of crude around the world, along with the global economy.

The market did better yesterday on another better inflation report, which was the May P.P.I. which showed a nominal gain of 0.1% and 2.6% year over year and for the core rate excluding food and energy it also gained 0.1% and 2.7% for the year. Weekly jobless claims stayed around the same of 248,000.

After a strong start with the Dow, S&P and the Nasdaq higher by 250, 21 and 85 points, things took a sharp downward turn after the Commerce Department Secretary made his usual hard to believe comments about how great the recently concluded U.S.-China meetings were and about how many “deals” that other countries were begging the U.S. to take as only one vague one with the U.K. is on the radar.

The market continued to move higher yesterday, continuing its recent bullish streak as investors continued to hear what will come of trade talks between the United States and China.

In a narrow session market by small changes in the major indices, things generally moved higher against a background as the world’s two largest economies began talks on trade that could help avoid a recession.

Once again ignoring the completely misguided estimates from A.D.P. which came in at only 37,000 yet the financial media went with this as some sort of accurate reporting, the market did very nicely on Friday with the Dow up by 443 to 42,762 led by AAPL for a change, plus AXP, CRM, CVX, GS, JPM and UNH.

I had been saying for days now, that how could the market keep doing so well with no tariff agreements in sight despite the administration’s promises that they would be rolling in, which they have not been.

The market ran out of steam late yesterday, as the Dow went negative and the S&P fell back to unchanged after being higher for most of the day.

For the second straight day this week, the market once again started lower by 119 and then pushed higher and higher into the close as the Dow rose for the fourth straight session with a 214 point gain to 42,519 led by NVDA at a new high plus MSFT and IBM.