Stocks Advance on St. Louis Fed Chief's Comments

Question: How do you know when St. Louis Fed President James Bullard is advocating for the Fed to continue buying MBS and Treasuries?

Answer: When his lips are moving.

Bullard, one of the most dovish characters in the history of monetary policy, would probably advocate buying swampland if he thought it would goose the economy a bit, but let's not give him any ideas.

His lips moved today, and so did the markets, though in a suitably sheepish kind of way, off the highs, with the Dow far outpacing the other indices.

That was all one needed to know today about the doings on Wall Street. The real show continued down in that other viper's den - Washington, DC - where the IRS scandal widened and deepened. It's really not worth commenting upon at this stage of the game, but, a la Watergate, the number of lies are mounting, the stories are getting twisted, the number of guilty-looking witnesses growing and the conspiracy theorists are having a field day.

With any luck, President Obama will be dragged in by Labor Day, or before he and congress are supposed to get serious about the debt ceiling... again.

The sooner the trash is removed from the nation's capital (suggest starting with the Attorney General), the better.

Dow 15,387.58, +52.30 (0.34%)
NASDAQ 3,502.12, +5.69 (0.16%)
S&P 500 1,669.16, +2.87 (0.17%)
NYSE Composite 9,598.26, +10.72 (0.11%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,745,513,375
NYSE Volume 3,777,275,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3504-2926
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 629-25
WTI crude oil: 96.16, -0.55
Gold: 1,377.60, -6.50
Silver: 22.46, -0.127