Monday Morning Musings

The market briefly poked its head into higher ground after the open this morning, but has since pulled back a little bit. One of the culprits mentioned has been a spike in the dollar and drop in the euro that occurred after the open.

The spike in the dollar is also weighing on commodities, with oil prices down to $87.79, and gold pulling back slightly to $1376.

Asian markets were lower overnight, but recouped much of their earlier losses after North Korea failed to respond to military actions conducted by S. Korea, as it promised it would.

There is not much else in the way of market moving news this morning on both the corporate front and economic data today.

Trading comment: Volume will probably lighten up as the week wears on, as we near the Christmas holiday. Chatter should also heat up about the potential for a 'Santa Claus rally', which I believe is supposed to start the day after Christmas. Given that the market is already up nicely in the month of December, and investor sentiment is near giddy levels, I would not be surprised if Santa doesn't show up this year for the markets (or maybe he already has).

That said, one can never rule out the potential for fund managers to rush to put more money to work into year-end, which could buoy stocks, but is hard to handicap. At this juncture, I prefer to trim positions and take some profits where I have them, as opposed to making aggressive new bets.