Day Traders Diary
4/18/11
U.S. stock-indexes opened sharply lower on Monday after Standard & Poor's revised its long-term outlook on the U.S. to negative from stable indicating that the U.S. has a very large budget deficit and rising government indebtedness with no clear path to addressing the problem. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 182 points to 12,159. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index shed 19 points to 1,300 while the Nasdaq Composite fell 40 points to 2,724. The markets were set to open lower before the comments out of the Standard and Poors. The commodities are particularly weak following the SP report, a rise in rates in China, and news that Saudi Arabia is cutting oil production due to a glut. All the oils are lower along with every other commodity other than gold down as well. McMoran is down 3% following in line numbers. Transocean is down 2% after an analyst cut their numbers. Halliburton is one bright spot up 2% after beating estimates. One rare earth metal, Molycorp is up a percent to a new high after making a small acquisition worth only $18 million yet their market cap jumped by $62 million. Not a bad deal. The financials are getting hit once again even though Citigroup is modestly higher following better than expected earnings this morning. M&T Bank and Bank of Hawaii are higher following earnings while TD Ameritrade is lower following earnings. KeyCorp is down 4% following earnings. In the tech sector Google and Apple keep pushing lower. IBM, Intel, Qualcomm, and Maxim all received upgrades, yet all four are lower. After the first hour the Dow pushed lower dropping over 200 points while the Nasdaq declined 55 points. Through the morning the averages slowly recovered, but remained very weak. In the afternoon the averages kept slowly recovering. Apple recovered moving into the green. Research in Motion rallied a little bit more. Within the Dow, J&J was in the green, but then sold off. Boeing is now the only Dow component in the green. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 140 points, or 1.1%, at 12,201, its worst one-day drop since March 16, in the aftermath of Japan's quake and tsunami. The S&P 500 fell 14 points, or 1.1%, to 1,305, with energy leading declines across all 10 industry sectors. The Nasdaq Composite fell 29 points, or 1.1%, to 2,735.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.