At 1:30 pm....

Stocks are still mixed but the averages are moving higher.  No telling where we end up today.

Dow +17
Nas +18
S&P +4 to 1134

Oils are selling off.  Gold and Silver are basically in a free fall.

Who cares???

The NBA indefinitely postpones training camp and 43 preseason games, as the chance for a full-fledged regular season work stoppage (no ticket sales, less merchandising and limited advertising) increases. For firms with some revenue tied to the NBA - including MSG, DIS, CBS, CMCSA, NWSA, NKE, and BUD - is a stoppage already baked into their stock prices?

The NBA doesn't get interesting until the playoffs anyway.

Netflix losing popularity??

A new poll from The Street finds 42% of Netflix (NFLX) subscribers planning to fully cancel their subscriptions following the rise of Qwikster. A number of readers also feel the company is now "out of touch" with its customers, and think the placing of Netflix's DVD and streaming queues on separate sites will hurt the user experience.

I was actually looking on the streaming service last night for a movie to watch.  There wasn't anything that caught my eye.  The loss of STARZ is going to kill them.

Let's look at Silver....

Let's check out the relationship between the Silver Trust ETF (SLV) and the Proshares Ultra Short Silver ETF (ZSL).

If you look at the weekly charts you can see that ZSL has an all-time high of $242 set on the week of February 5, 2010.

At that same time the Silver Trust (SLV) was at a low of 14.27

Currently:

SLV is at 31.21

ZSL is at 18.05

Now I'm no mathematician, but something funny is going on here.  So basically a 118% rise in the SLV leads to a 92.5% drop in ZSL.  So if SLV drops back to 14.27 will the ZSL go back up to $242???

That my friends shows you how messed up these ETFs are!!!!

I showed you the SLV chart earlier.  Here is the ZSL chart:

Is Goodrich an easy 5 points???

Yesterday we told you that Goodrich is going to be purchased by United Tecnologies for $127.50 per share CASH.  The word CASH is key, meaning that is the price you will get paid if you own the stock on the date that the buyout actually occurs. 

The stock is trading at 121.93 as I write this.  So, the questions are:

1. Will the buyout definitely happen???  Answer: In the agreement, United Technologies agreed to pay a breakup fee of $500 Million if they back away from the deal.

2. How long would I need to hold the stock before the buyout occurs???  Answer:  It was announced that the deal should be finalized in the 2nd quarter next year...so basically 9 months.

Is it worth it???  A 4.5 % gain in 9 months???

Wanna see another ugly chart???

Check out Ancestry.com (ACOM).  I had been waiting for this one to come back to reality.  The stock went public back in November 2009 at $15.  It ran up to $45.79 earlier this year, but looks like it is heading back to at least where it came out.

Here is the weekly chart:

Might be a good time to short First Solar...

As I pointed out a few weeks ago, Solar stocks have been crashing.  The one remaining Solar stock with a long way to drop is First Solar (FSLR).  As you can see from the monthly chart going back to 2007, FSLR has no support level from here...so no telling how low it goes.

This morning, the stock fell to 61.55.  As I write this, the stock has rebounded to where it is actually up 1.99 to 68.85.  Could be an easy 7 points if it goes back and hits new lows.

Upgrades and Downgrades...

These are some of this Friday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen having an impact from Wall Street research calls.


Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) Started as Outperform at William Blair.
Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE: NLY) Started as Neutral at UBS.
Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) Started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Corning, Inc. (NYSE: GLW) named Bear of the Day at Zacks.
McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD) Raised to Strong Buy at S&P Equity Research.
Pandora Media, Inc. (NYSE: P) Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. (NASDAQ: PTEN) named value stock of the day at Zacks.
Pepsico, Inc. (NYSE: PEP) Cut to Hold at Stifel Nicolaus.
Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS) Started as Overweight at JPMorgan.
Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE: UA) Started as Buy at Argus.
V.F. Corporation (NYSE: VFC) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.
VimpelCom Ltd. (NYSE: VIP) Started as Sell at Goldman Sachs.
Xilinx Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) Started as Outperform at William Blair.
Youku.com Inc (NYSE: YOKU) Raised to Positive at Susquehanna.

Gold and Silver breaking down...

Thought I'd show you the Gold and Silver ETF charts. 

GLD has broken hard thru the critical support level of 170.

SLV had support at around 32.50.  It is breaking thru that level this morning.

Alexion may receive approval for Soliris...

Shares of Alexion Pharamaceuticals (ALXN) register a gain after the firm says it has received a positive opinion in Europe for Soliris with a final decision from the European Commission expected in about two months. Soliris is a first treatment for patients with a rare life-threatening blood disorder.

ALXN is up 2.14 to 65.52

Alexion is the Number 1 rated stock in Investor's Business Daily's Top 50.

What does HP have in common with eBay???

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ -5.3%) sinks to a six-year low $21.60/share, losing all the pop from the Apotheker firing. Investors apparently are not thrilled that H-P looks to have decided to do pretty much what Apotheker was going to do anyway. On Meg Whitman, the concern is that she "faces a learning curve" in the enterprise business after 30 years in the consumer space.

I don't get this hire at all. 

At 10:30 am....

Stocks are mixed as traders (both longs and shorts) try to decide whether to hold their positions over the weekend.  Art Cashin (the UBS market strategist - with 40+ years on the exchange) think this market is setting up for a crash on Monday.  He then thinks that will be quickly followed by a MASSIVE rally.  Now, he has been looking for capitulation for about 10 years.

Right now:

Dow -17
Nas +11
S&P +1 to 1130

If you are in the crash camp, it might be wise to put some protection on your accounts over the weekend. 

JP Morgan trying to prop up Pandora....

Shares of Pandora (P) gets an upgrade from Morgan Stanley to Overweight from Equalweight on valuation. Morgan put a $16 price target on the shares


Oh....by the way: JP Morgan was one of the lead underwriters of the Pandora IPO on June 15th, which was priced at....you guessed it...$16 a share.

Pandora is up 0.70 to 10.76 today.

Here's a surprising downgrade...

Moody's again downgrades the Greek banks, saying it "believes that private creditors may incur substantial economic losses on their Greek government bond holdings beyond the terms of the current debt exchange."

I think I could have made this downgrade.

Gold breaks down...

Gold legs down below $1,700/oz. for the first time since early August. A technician might look at a chart and say there is no support for the metal until $1,500. It was from this level on July 1 that gold took off in a straight line to $1,900 over the next 6 weeks.


The Gold ETF (GLD) is opening down 5.05 to 164


That is a huge breakdown on the charts. 

Good Morning. Futures down but off their lows...

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower open as growing concerns about the impact on the global economy from a possible Greek default eclipsed hopes for concrete action from G20 finance chiefs. European shares fell, extending the previous session's steep losses, on fresh concerns that European banks would take further write-downs on their Greek debt exposure.

Asian markets were largely down on fears of renewed recession in the developed world, which left investors largely unimpressed. Brent crude oil turned lower, falling more than $1 a barrel and extending the previous session's slide on concern about the outlook for the economy and oil demand.

Gold hit a one-month low and was set to post its sharpest weekly drop since May, hit by a sell-off in the commodities.

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.