Day Traders Diary

7/7/09

U.S. stocks tilted mildly lower at Tuesday's start, with investors on guard ahead of quarterly results and amid underlying worries about the strength of the economic recovery. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 20 points to 8,304. The S&P 500 Index declined a point to 897, while the Nasdaq Composite fell fractionally to 1,786. Every day is morphing into the next, light volume and very few buyers. Weyehaeuser is down 5% after announcing plans to cut their dividend by 80%. The rest of the news for the markets looks good, but is falling on deaf ears. The financials are holding in better than most sectors. Keycorp received an upgrade this morning. The stock is up 5%. Morgan Stanley is modestly in the green after having their earnings estimates raised by one analyst. Northern Trust is unchanged on an upgrade. In the tech sector, Apple, Brocade, and Intel received upgrades. Only Brocade is higher. A few retailers are higher, like Walmart and Dicks Sporting Goods. Dicks was upgraded. Callaway is jumping 5% on an upgrade. Through the morning, the selling picked up, accelerating in the afternoon into the last hour. Entering the last hour, the Dow was down 125 points. The Nasdaq declined 31 points. No rebound into the close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 161 points, or 1.9%, at 8,163. The S&P 500 lost 18 points, or nearly 2%, at 881, with only health-care stocks rising. The Nasdaq Composite fell 41 points, or 2.3%, to 1,746 points.

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