Romney-Ryan Republican Ticket Main Market Focus, Trumps Economy & Europe :

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were the main focus for investors today.  Analysts scrambled to determine what the combined ticket meant for markets, especially the healthcare and financial sector.  Economic news headlines and Europe may continue to take a backseat to political economy issues in the near-term and the intense scrutiny of the Republican ticket suggests the presidential race will become a front and center issue for picking stocks that could rally into the next quarter and in 2013.

The FOMC will be meeting in a few weeks which makes the jobless claims numbers for this week important.  If job trends continue to weaken now that Romney has picked his VP, expect Ryan to dig in and make comparisons between the current administration and the Republican future outlook.

Monday has been a relatively bad day for the stock market all summer and at 3:30 today, the S&P 500 was down slightly but still above the psychologically-important 1,400 with bond prices nearing the lows for the day.  At the time of this writing, the S&P 500 was at 1,402.57 down -3.30.  Markets today didn’t seem to consider Ryan to be a negative addition to the Republican Mitt Romney’s chances of getting elected. We are bullish on U.S. equities in the short-run and are watching the euro to see if headlines from abroad will begin to impact the market again.