Day Traders Diary

1/21/09

U.S. stocks are rebounding today thanks in part to better than expected earnings from IBM. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 132 points to 8,081. IBM is up 7%. The S&P 500 climbed 14 points to 820 while the Nasdaq Composite added 31 points to 1,472. The techs in general look pretty good. Google is higher following a couple of upgrades. Analog Devices is down after guiding earnings lower. The financials are rebounding, but remain precarious. Northern Trust looks great up 21% after actually beating estimates. Other financials reporting earnings include U.S. Bancorp, Hudson City Bancorp, Blackrock, and Fulton Financial. Only Blackrock is lower. American Express and Capital One are higher even though they were downgraded. GE is down a percent ahead of earnings at the end of the week. The airlines are weak as UAL and AMR lost a lot of money. Railroad company, CSX is up 5% on in line earnings. In the retail space, Coach is down 6% on dismal earnings. Walmart is lower on a downgrade. Another Dow component, United Tech is lower following earnings. After the first half an hour the averages remained strong near the highs of the day. Keep your fingers crossed. After the first hour the rally started to fizzle particularly within the financials. U.S. Bancorp opened up 6% higher, but following their conference call, the stock dropped over 20%. Here we go again. Through the morning the averages remained in the green, but not by much. In the afternoon the averages slowly improved, picking up speed entering the last hour. Insider buying at Bank of America helped lift that stock and other financials a little bit more. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 279 points, or 3.5%, at 8,228. The S&P 500 gained 35 points, or 4.4%, to 840 while the Nasdaq Composite added 66 points, or 4.6%, to 1,507.

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