Day Traders Diary

6/25/12

U.S. stocks opened sharply lower Monday, with Wall Street pessimism growing on prospects of concrete results from a meeting of European leaders later in the week. A Supreme Court ruling on 2010's Affordable Care Act is also expected this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 144 points, or 1.1%, to 12,495. The S&P 500 lost 17 points, or 1.4%, to 1,317. The Nasdaq Composite shed 40 points, or 1.4%, to 2,852. Goldman Sachs' call to short the S&P 500 last Thursday is looking better and better. Very few stocks to the upside today. Walmart is the only Dow component higher. The fertilizer stocks are performing well on a sector upgrade. CF Industries is up 4%, Potash is up 2%, and Agrium is higher by a percent. Another material stock gold miner, Newmont Mining is higher by 1%, but that's it in this beaten down sector. Cement maker, Cemex is higher by 4% on news the company is trying to pare down debt. Many of the energy stocks keeps pushing lower by more than 2% including Exxon Mobil. Halliburton is down 3% on a downgrade. Alcoa is down 3% as one analyst cut estimates. The industrials are also getting hit. Caterpillar is down 2.5%. Many of the Industrials are down 2% or more. Boeing is down a percent even though it was upgraded. Carnival is also lower on an upgrade. In the tech space Nvidia, Redhat, and Sandisk were all upgraded, but are lower. Intel is lower by 2% as one analyst cautious comments on Intel. Microsoft is also lower by 2.5%. Even Google, Apple, and IBM are getting hit. Nowhere to hide. The financials are getting hit this morning. JP Morgan is leading the charge down 3%. Deutsche Bank is down 5% on a downgrade. Oppenheimer indicated there is good risk/reward in Morgan Stanley yet the stock is lower by 4%. The risk/reward is getting better. One defensive sector of late, healthcare is lower as the Supreme Court has postponed their decision on Obamacare for another day. Through the first hour the averages pushed lower with the Dow dropping 160 points and the Nasdaq declining 50 points. Not many places to hide. Through the morning the Dow fell as much as 175 points before rebounding. The Nasdaq fell 64 points or 2% before rebounding. The European markets took a bigger hit with Spain's Index falling 3.6%. In the afternoon the averages moved sideways half a percent from the lows of the day. Nothing looks particularly good heading into the close or quarter end this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 138 points, or 1.1%, at 12,502. Also down for a third in four sessions, the S&P 500 Index shed 21 points, or 1.6%, to 1,313. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 56 points, or 2%, to 2,836.

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.