Stampeding Bulls! Buy Everything!

MoonHowler

Huffington Post:

Investors will continue to ride the speediest rally in U.S. stocks since the Great Depression despite growing concerns that the market is overbought and due for a correction.

Wall Street posted its third consecutive week of gains with the S&P 500 now up 6.8 percent for the year and more than 20 percent in just six months

Regardless of where the stocks start off in the morning, they crawl upwards by afternoon.  Analysts expect a correction but they aren’t sure when.  There seems to be a tendency for more and more investors to buy.  

But there is a perceptible level of anxiety in the market. Trading volume has been exceptionally low recently and the CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, is up on the week despite the gains in stocks.

So what does all this mean?  Are lots of people buying now?  What is spurring this buying spree?  I sure hope we aren’t headed for another downturn.

Pat.Herve’s link on 401K

The New Rules: Contraception is not abortion

MoonHowler

During the Bush Administration, the ‘conscience clause’ allowed health care providers to decline care to patients if it would violate their religious beliefs.  President Obama has tried to clarify the new rules  which come after consideration of more than 300,000 public comments.  Basically, the new rules say that contraception is not abortion; specifically: “There is no indication that the federal health care provider conscience statutes intended that the term ‘abortion’ included contraception.”

According to NPR:

“The language published today reaffirms the principles of protecting the doctor-patient relationship by repealing the most onerous and intrusive parts of Bush’s last-minute refusal rule,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

NARAL said the rules, as originally written, “could have allowed insurance companies to deny claims for birth control pills, hospitals to refuse emergency contraception to rape survivors, and employees at HMOs to refuse their patients referrals for abortion care.”

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