Boom Times: Stocks Up Every Friday in 2013

Want to know what the easiest trade of 2013 has been?

Simple. Buy any index fund, future or call on Thursday just prior to the market close and sell it for a profit some time on Friday.

Stocks have been up on each and every Friday of 2013, ten in a row, including today's push higher thanks to a BLS non-farm payroll report that showed creation of 236,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate falling from 7.9 to 7.7%.

Never mind that most of the jobs were part time or that the jump in the unemployment rate was due to a furher deterioration in the labor participation rate, Wall Street took the headline number and ran with it.

As has been said ad nauseum on this and other like-minded blogs, there has probably never been a safer environment in which to invest in stocks. Due to the low level of returns on bonds, equities are the only game in town and one would have to have been one of the worst stock pickers or timers of the last century not to have made money in this unprecedented, elongated bull run.

Besides being in the midst of one of the best market advances of all time, today marks the four-year anniversary of the bottom. On March 9, 2009, stocks bottomed, began to rise and have never looked back.

Whether one agrees with the tactics or not, one has to hand it to the federal reserve and Chairman Bernanke. Through their efforts of quantitative easing, sero interest rate policy and coordination with central banks around the globe, the Fed - with an assist from the Treasury Department - averted what could have been one of the most devastating financial collapses of all time.

Bravo! Mr. Bernanke.

Dow 14,396.92, +67.43 (0.47%)
NASDAQ 3,244.37, +12.28 (0.38%)
S&P 500 1,551.15, +6.89 (0.45%)
NYSE Composite 9,059.53, +46.09 (0.51%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,574,870,375
NYSE Volume 3,734,663,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4298-2148
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 601-21 (WOW!)
WTI crude oil: 91.95, +0.39
Gold: 1,576.90, +1.80
Silver: 28.95, +0.14