Stocks closed modestly lower yesterday after spending most of the day in the green.

But the markets retained the overwhelming majority of their gains from Tuesday which saw all of the indexes up by more than 2%.

Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, gave his semiannual testimony yesterday to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Mr. Powell reiterated the Fed's commitment to fighting inflation, which means higher interest rates and quantitative tightening.

In his prepared remarks, he noted that 'aggregate demand is strong, supply constraints have been larger and longer lasting than anticipated, and price pressures have spread to a broad range of goods and services.' He also said that 'the tightening in financial conditions that we have seen in recent months should continue to temper growth and help bring demand into better balance with supply.'

He ended his remarks by restating his position that 'the American economy is very strong and well positioned to handle tighter monetary policy.'

Mr. Powell will give his testimony today before the House Committee on Financial Services.

In other news, MBA Mortgage Applications were up 4.2% with purchases up 7.9%, and refi's (not surprisingly), down -3.1%. In spite of new purchase applications being up last week, they were down by -10% vs. last year at this time.

On deck for today are Weekly Jobless Claims, the PMI Composite report, and the EIA Natural Gas and Petroleum Status reports.

In the meantime, stocks have a solid lead on the week. And we're overdue for another up week as stocks look oversold and undervalued.

And if you're a value investor, you couldn't be happier as bargains abound.

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The Golden Era of Value Investing is Back

Best,