Day Traders Diary
6/27/11
U.S. stocks sputtered Monday in trying to bounce back from three days of declines after the government reported consumer spending was unchanged in May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 35 points to 11,969. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 2 points to 1,270. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained nearly a point to 2,653. Early weakness quickly evaporated. The financials were the first to perk up. Over the weekend, Basel 3 regulations were introduced with restrictions not as severe as originally feared. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and PNC Financials all received position analyst comments. All three are higher. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were downgraded. Goldman is in the red. Hartford received an upgrade, but the stock is not reacting. The techs are mixed this morning. Apple and Google look good, but not much else. Cisco Systems was downgraded, but the stock is higher while Qualcomm was upgraded, but the stock is lower. The commodities are mixed. Agrium and CF Industries are higher thanks to upgrades. A number of oil stocks are higher like Chevron and Exxon Mobil. Nabors Industries is lower even though it was upgraded while Louisiana Pacific is lower even though it was upgraded. In the retail space Pepsi, Amazon, and Decker Outdoors are higher on upgrades. Trex is down a whopping 10% on a downgrade. The stock is down 30% in the last three months. Through the morning the averages slowly improved thanks to the financials. Go figure. Entering the lunch hour the Dow rose over 100 points while the Nasdaq improved by 32 points. So far so good. In the afternoon around 2 o'clock, the averages had another push higher with the Dow jumping 150 points. Kraft is the only Dow component trading lower. The Nasdaq held its' gains still up 1.5%. In the last hour the averages gave up some of their gains, but still finished with a solid return. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 108 points at 12,043 led by a 3.7% gain in Microsoft and a 3.1% rise in Bank of America. The S&P 500 gained 11 points to 1,280 with tech and consumer discretionary shares leading advances in all 10 sectors. The Nasdaq Composite rose 35 points, or 1.3%, to 2,688.All comments contained herein are for informational purposes only, and should not be considered as a solicitation to buy or sell any security. The firm does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information or make any warranties regarding results from it's usage.