The primary goal of my oftentimes meandering morning market missive is to attempt to identify the key drivers of the stock market on a daily basis. The idea is to try and stay in tune with what "is" actually happening in the market and to avoid the trap of thinking about what "should" be happening. Trust me when I say that setting the ego aside and identifying what the actual drivers of the action is can be easier said than done!

Once you make the decision to leave your personal view of the world out of the equation, one of the tricks to achieving my daily goal is to recognize that the drivers of the markets often differ given the time frame being evaluated. For example, what is driving the market in the near-term (i.e. what traders and their computers are focused on today) may be completely different from the drivers of the action from a long-term perspective - such as the fundamental picture.

As such, let me start this morning's missive by stating that we are focused on the near-term outlook here, which I define as a few days to a couple weeks.

Watching the Greenback

With the caveats out of the way, from my perch, there can be little argument that key driver to the stock right now is the recent surge in the U.S. dollar.

Powershares US Dollar ETF (UUP) - Daily

View Larger Image

While the daily correlation to the S&P 500 is not perfect on a minute-by-minute basis at this time, I can say that the intraday spikes in the stock market do appear to have been driven by the action in the dollar. It's as if somebody somewhere suddenly looks at a screen and say, "Geez, look at the darn dollar!"

Cutting to the ...

Stocks got smacked around pretty good on Tuesday as a triple whammy of negative news caused traders and their computers to suddenly rethink their outlook.

Cutting to the chase, it was a combination of lousy earnings guidance, surprisingly hawkish Fedspeak, ...

To be sure, the action in the stock market has been sloppy for the better part of three months now. For example, the S&P 500 closed at 2163.75 on July 15 and at 2163.66 yesterday - can you say, sideways? ...

Good Monday morning and welcome back. Before we let the blinking screens take over our lives again, let's step back and look at the state of the market and review our objective major market indicators/models.

The first step is a ...

This morning I'd like to finish what has turned out to be a rather lengthy series on why tactical management strategies have not been living up to expectations over the last several years.

Last time, we talked about the role ...

Good Monday morning and welcome to the home stretch of 2016. Before we let the blinking screens take over our lives on the first first day of Q4, let's step back and start the week with a review of the ...

On this final trading day of the third quarter, the focus has shifted entirely to state of Germany's biggest banks, namely Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank. While the soundness of the European banking system has been an issue on and off ...

One down, one to go. Important central bank meetings, that is. While we will have to wait a few more hours to hear whether Janet Yellen's merry band of central bankers is going to raise interest rates today, we did ...

With the markets waiting on both the BoJ (Bank of Japan) meeting and Janet Yellen's announcement on Wednesday, let's go ahead and spend our time this morning continuing the discussion on why tactical/technical strategies have not fared well in recent ...

Good Monday morning and welcome back. Before we let the blinking screens take over our lives again, let's step back and start the week with a review of the state of the market and our objective major market indicators/models.

The ...

With the markets (a) stuck in what I'll call price discovery mode in relation to the idea that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the QE Era and (b) in the middle of what has historically been ...

The key driver to the markets at the present time is the idea that the Global QE era is coming to a end. The question for such a massive, macro issue is, of course, what to do about it and ...