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    • After hitting a record high of 1687 a month ago, the once-hot S&P 500 (^GSPC) has suddenly turned cold. Not ice cold or bear market cold, but rather what Jonathan Krinsky, chief technical market analyst at Miller Tabak & Co. might call "corrective phase" cold.

      "May 22nd (was a) key reversal day when we made those all-time new highs then traded lower on the day," Krinksy says in the attached video, highlighting the market's recent pattern of setting lower highs. "To have a little bit of chop after such a significant (13-year) breakout should not be unexpected and I think that's really what we're seeing going on here right now."

      Also keeping him on edge, he says, is the fact that we currently have "a declining 20-day moving average, which shows that short-term momentum is still moving lower."

      That said, his caution is far from panic mode as he also take comfort from the continued support and uptrend that the 50-day moving average offers.

      Read More »from Key Market Technical Levels to Watch Ahead of the Fed
    • President Obama stuck an unofficial fork in the Ben Bernanke era last night. In an interview with Charlie Rose the President said of the Fed chairman, "he's already stayed longer than he wanted or was supposed to." The President added that Bernanke has been an "outstanding partner along with the White House" in helping the US economy recover from the so-called Great Recession.

      The President's choice of words was unusual but the notion of Bernanke stepping aside when his term ends early next year was not. Originally appointed by then President Bush in 2006, Bernanke was re-appointed by Obama in 2010.

      In the attached clip my Breakout co-Host Matt Nesto agrees that only the words "supposed to" made Obama's comments a topic of discussion. Noting that the White House "immediately backpedaled" on the comments, explaining that the verbally meticulous President was simply speaking off-the cuff during his interview on PBS with Charlie Rose.

      Much like Tim Geithner in the waning days of his term as Secretary of the Treasury, Bernanke shows all the signs of a guy who can't wait to get out of office and move on with his life. Much if not all of his second term has been spent devising different ways to stimulate the economy and castigating law makers for their inability to craft sustainable fiscal policy.

      Read More »from Obama Starts Tapering Bernanke’s Term
    • With summertime comes weddings, proms and parties that demand you look your best. For many women that means spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars on new dresses for each event, or wearing the dress, hiding the tags and returning it to the store the next day. But Rent the Runway gives women another option --renting dresses that are in season, capture the hottest fashions, and doesn't require bending the rules.

      "We’re actually legalizing a behavior that women have been doing kind of on the DL [down low] for many years," says co-founder & CEO Jennifer Hyman. "We’re taking away some of the worst customers from a department store and converting them into positive luxury customers on our end."

      Hyman and her Harvard Business School classmate Jenny Fleiss started their company in 2009. It's been called the Netflix of fashion; they offer short-term rental of designer clothing at a fraction of the department store prices.

      For instance: a $3,500 Carolina Herrera gown can be rented for four days for $450 dollars. If that's still outside your budget you could rent a $425 Diane von Furstenberg dress for 50 bucks. There are all sorts of price points available to customers who log onto RentTheRunway.com. Once there women can browse dresses by style, designer and price. They can even input their measurements and see user-submitted pictures of dresses being worn by someone with a similar body type.

      "We think this is really empowering for women," says Hyman, "both that we’ve turned our customers into our models...[and] letting our own customers make the decision as to whether they think that someone like them looks good in [a particular dress]."

      The company recently partnered with Beyonce. The international superstar has chosen her favorite Rent the Runway styles and put them all in one place on the website. This allows customers to get a Beyonce look without paying Beyonce money.

      Read More »from The Netflix of Fashion: Will Rent the Runway Revolutionize Retail?
    • Since bottoming out four years ago, the unmatched rebound in bank stocks since March of 2009 has been nothing short of astounding, with the KBW Bank Index (^BKX) more than tripling. Over the shorter-term too, banks have been market leaders on the road to record highs, and have also outperformed the S&P 500 (^GSPC) on a 1, 3, 6 and 12 month basis.

      But according to Richard Suttmeier, chief market strategist ValuEngine, that leadership is not only about to end, it will carry broader ramificati0ons for the markets too.

      "It is important that banks lead," Suttmeier says in the attached video. "The problem that I have with the big banks is that they're all rated hold. There's not a single buy among them. The last of the buys was Citigroup (C), but even that's not a buy anymore."

      For the record, shares of Citigroup are up 77% over the past 12 months, making them the third best performer of some 80 stocks in the large cap financial sector (XLF), delivering roughly triple the return of the S&P 500 over the same period of time.

      When asked if the market will be able to churn higher without the banks leading, Suttmeier is unambiguous.

      Read More »from Time to Take Profits in Banks: Suttmeier

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