Day Traders Diary

10/25/11

U.S. stocks fell sharply Tuesday on cautious comments following earnings from 3M and Cummins Engines, coupled with reports that Europe's debt-crisis meeting had been cancelled. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 133 points to 11,780. The S&P 500 Index declined 19 points to 1,234. The Nasdaq Composite shed 38 points to 2,660. The earnings keep flooding in but most stocks are lower following their reports. Amgen, Veeco Instruments, Texas Instruments, Peabody Energy, Illinois Tools, Ryder, Deutsche Bank, Reynolds America, Ranger Resources, Lexmark, CIT Group, and NBT Bank are all trading lower following earnings. Netflix is getting clobbered down 36% after lower guidance for the fourth quarter and for 2012. Steel stocks, AK Steel and US Steel are down 12% and 6% respectively following earnings. Oil driller, Weatherford is down 4% following earnings while BP is higher after earnings. 3M, T Rowe Price, and Cummins Engine are down 6%. MF Gobal is down 35% this morning. In other words, nothing is working well. Through the morning the averages stabilized near the lows of the day. A few stocks are trading higher. In the tech space, Fortinet is jumping 8% after beating estimates. The company was featured on the cover of Barrons. ARM Holdings is up 3% on in line earnings. Cisco Systems and Intel are modestly higher. IBM briefly moved into the green after raising their share buyback plan by $7 billion. Through the morning and into the afternoon the averages remained weak. Sallie Mae or SLM Corp is down 10% following earnings and concerns the government may intervene and disrupt the current industry. In the last hour the averages accelerated to the downside. Here we go again. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 207 points, or 1.7%, to close at 11,706. The S&P 500 lost 25 points, or 2%, to 1,229. The weakness was led by a 3.1% drop in financials although all 10 industries declined on the day. The Nasdaq Composite slid 61 points, or 2.3%, to 2,638. The day's decline put the composite back into a loss for the year.

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