Day Traders Diary

7/5/11

U.S. stocks opened mostly lower following the three day weekend and a five-session winning stretch that had the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rise 5.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 19 points to 12,563. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 4 points to 1,335. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell a point to 2,815. A few deals over the weekend. Immucor is jumping 30% after agreeing to be taken private for $2 billion. Southern Union is up 3% on rumors that Williams Company may raise their bid for the gas company. The commodities in general look good. The fertilizers did not participate last week, but are catching up today. Agrium and Potash are both up 3% to new recent highs. The steel stocks look good after Worthington's earnings last week. Exxon Mobil made the wrong headlines last week rupturing a pipeline, spilling oil into Yellowstone River. Surprisingly, the stock is only modestly lower. A select number of techs are performing well including Google and Apple. Google received an upgrade with a $670 price target. Plenty of upgrades this morning. Freescale Semi, Sandisk, and Qualcomm are higher on upgrades. IBM is higher at a new 52 week high. Not bad. Riverbed Tech is down 2% on a downgrade. Microsoft made news this weekend collaborating with Baidu.com to help with their English service. Neither stock is reacting much. The financials are lower after perking up last week. Goldman Sachs is down 2% on a downgrade. After the first hour the averages were still stuck around the unchanged level which actually isn't bad. The techs and commodities look good, but the financials are weak. Through the morning, the averages crept back to the unchanged level led by techs and commodities. Netflix is up 6% on news they will stream movies and shows into Latin America. In the afternoon the Dow fell back into the red on news Moodys downgraded the debt of Portugal. The Euro sold off while the US dollar rallied. The strong US dollar has not been good for the markets of late. In the last hour, the averages recovered only to sell back off into the close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 12 points to 12,569. The S&P 500 Index finished down a point at 1,337. The Nasdaq Composite Index finished the day up 9 points to 2,825 points.

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