I wish my Money & Banking class in college was this easy—hell, even gym was hard by comparison to current bank stress tests. Basically it’s an open book test allowing banks to set their own evaluations on some toxic waste and hope investors take it all in stride. The false and misleading statements from CEOs like BAC CEO Ken Lewis are, in ordinary times, shocking. These days it passes for business as usual. “We don’t need any capital….we’re sound...we can return TARP money today…and so forth.” So, BAC and C do in fact need more capital. Who knew!?!

Today markets were pulled lower by iffy stress test results and pushed higher by better than expected (there’s that bullish slang again) consumer confidence numbers.

Volume remains light and one would imagine more action will result from the Fed meeting aftermath although it should be a nonevent but then so was the last one. Nevertheless, any time the Fed meets investors pull in their horns until an announcement is made.


































































































































It’s not that I’m bored or anything but a few more charts than normal just to give you a sense of the world. After all it isn’t just about the US anymore that’s for sure. I’ll admit to a case of “acute bronchitis” as the doctor called it and in between coughing my brains out I may as well post some charts. I’ve always told readers if they have a particular market they’d like featured to write me at dave@etfdigest.com and I’ll do my best with it.

The house movers come tomorrow and I hope to post but will have to do it from my laptop which isn’t as convenient as having multiple screens.

Enough about me, let’s talk about the Fed. On second thought, let’s let them do the talking and leave it to others to parse their words. Obviously I’m not happy with the state of affairs. Who is? Maybe it’s just that I’m getting old and have seen enough bad actors in my time.

Let’s see what happens.

Disclaimer: Among other issues the ETF Digest maintains positions in: SPY, MDY, IWM, QQQQ, XLY, XLI, XLB, IYR, IVE, DBC, USL, XLE, DBB, DBA, MOO, EFA, EEM, EWJ, EWA, EWZ, IEV, EWY, EWC, EIS, EWM, IFN, EZA and FXI.