Thursday, September 22, 2011

Stocks down but off their lows....

Stocks closed broadly lower in follow thru to the Fed's "Twist" move yesterday.  As I said earlier, it's amazing how sentiment and news can change that quickly.  Prior to 2 pm yesterday, things looked fine, after 2:15 pm, it's all doom and gloom.  It's all BS to me.  Here's how we closed:

Dow -391
Nas -82
S&P -37 to 1129

The good thing is we did close above 1100 on the S&P.  A move below that would cause me some concern.  Until then, it's just trading.

At 2:30 pm....

Stocks have taken another turn lower in the last hour...on news of another stalemate in the house on a spending bill.  Here we go again.

Dow -457
Nas -97
S&P -44 to 1122

Too many stocks pulled down...suggests that we are seeing program selling of ETF's.

At 1:00 pm....

Stocks still broadly lower.

Dow -373
Nas -69
S&P -34 to 1132

Nothing new to report.

Stocks continue to sell off....

At 11:50 am we are at:

Dow -365
Nas -67
S&P -34 to 1132

While the averages are at their day lows, some stocks have rebounded and cut their earlier losses in half. 

At 2:14 pm yesterday the Dow was at 11380, and now we are at 10745.  That is a 635 point drop since the Fed made the "twisted" announcement that was supposed to help our markets.  The selloff seems a bit overdone.

Let's keep an eye on the S&P 500.  A move back above 1150 would be a "buy" signal, a move below 1100 would not be good.

Wedbush says it's time to buy Netflix...

Wedbush upgrades Netflix (NFLX -0.3%) and raises its target to $155 from $110, based on a belief that the driver for the separation of Netflix into two businesses was to position the streaming business for sale to Amazon (AMZN -4.7%). Wedbush thinks Amazon has always wanted to be in streaming but has been constrained from buying Netflix by tax considerations.

Netflix is up 1.67 to 130.25 this morning.

Ugly open....

Stocks are getting hammered again this morning as it seems that all of a sudden the world is collapsing again.  So much of this is manipulated by negative headlines that seem to build up and are then conveniently released when the market weakens, like yesterday.  The big takeaways from yesterday's actions were the breakdown in the transports and gold.  The gold breakdown was to be expected by anyone who can pull away and look objectively at such a runup in price.  No different than the Housing bubble or the Tech bubble. 

More significant is the drop in Transports.  Strength in Transportation stocks is characteristic of a healthy world economy.  We need to keep an eye on this and heed its warnings.

As of 9:50 am:

Dow -341
Nas -75
S&P -35 to 1132

Here is a chart on the Dow Jones transports:

Bed, Bath and Beyond reports better than expected earnings...

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (BBBY). The company posted a quarterly profit that beat Wall Street expectations, as more shoppers showed an interest in decorating their homes. Net income for the second quarter was $229.4 million, or 93 cents a share, compared with $181.8 million, or 70 cents a share, a year ago. The company's same-store sales rose 5.6 percent. For the third quarter, Bed Bath expects to earn 82-87 cents a share, compared with average analysts' expectations of 86 cents per share.

BBBY is down 1.50 to 56 this morning.

United Technologies buys Goodrich...

United Technologies Corp. (UTX). The diversified manufacturer has reached a $16.5 billion cash deal to acquire aircraft components maker Goodrich Corp (GR), in what would be United Tech’s biggest deal in a decade.  United Tech said on Wednesday it would pay $127.50 a share for Goodrich, a 47 percent premium over the stock's closing price last Thursday. It also includes $1.9 billion in assumed debt.


Goodrich had been running up on rumors of this buyout over the last few sessions.  Guess these rumors actually came true.  Here is the chart as of last night, where the stock closed at 109.49.  Note the stock should open today at around $127.50.

Gold prices breaking lower premarket....

The price of gold is currently down $70 to $1738 an ounce.  Take a look at the chart below.  Gold had been holding up above 1750, but is clearly breaking thru that level today.  If you own gold, be careful.  The next support level is 1700, after that "look out below".

Futures lower...

US stock index futures pointed to a sharply lower open on Wall Street Thursday after the Federal Reserve warned of significant risks to the struggling economy and as data showed a further contraction in China's manufacturing sector.

The Fed launched a new plan to lower long-term borrowing costs and bolster the battered housing market by saying it would sell $400 billion of short-term Treasury bonds to buy the same amount of longer-term US government debt. This was its latest attempt to kickstart growth that slowed to a crawl over the first half of the year, but global markets were unimpressed.