Day Traders Diary

7/26/11

U.S. stocks opened mostly lower on Tuesday as lawmakers remain in a standoff over the federal debt. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 50 points to 12,541. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell nearly 2 points to 1,335. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 3 points to 2,846. Plenty of earnings keep flooding in with a lot of volatility. Stocks trading lower following earnings include Illinois Tools, UPS, JetBlue, 3M, T Rowe Price, Hershey Foods, Rogers Communication, Eastman Kodak, Patriot Coal, BP, NBT Bancorp, Jacobs, AK Steel, and Valero. All the commodity stocks are getting hit. AK Steel is down 10%, Patriot Coal is down 9%, and Valero is down 3%. Oil driller Weatherford is jumping 8% following earnings. That stock was highlighted in Barrons last weekend. Freeport McMoran and rare earth play MolyCorp are two other commodity plays trading higher. The stocks trading higher following earnings including Western Union, Radio Shack, Under Armour, Supervalu, Dominos Pizza, Lockheed Martin, Cummins, Weatherford, CIT, and Glaxo Smtih Kline. In the tech space Broadcom is jumping 10% following earnings. Baidu.com, Texas Instruments, and Lexmark are also higher following earnings. F5 Networks and Google are higher on upgrades. Apple looks good as well. In fact, after the first hour the average recovered led by the techs. The Nasdaq climbed back to the unchanged level while the Dow remained weak weighed down by a 4% decline in 3M and a 2% decline in United Tech. In the afternoon the Nasdaq moved into the green with the Dow trying to recover only to sell back off in the last hour thanks to more rhetoric out of Washington. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished lower for a third straight session, losing 91 points to 12,501. Shares of 3M led the Dow lower with a 5.4% loss. The S&P 500 fell 5 points to 1,331, led by a drop in industrials and natural-resource stocks. The Nasdaq Composite lost 2 points to 2,839.

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