Day Traders Diary

8/14/09

U.S. stocks opened modestly lower on Friday, with the S&P 500 poised to snap a four-week winning streak, after benign economic data failed to bolster sentiment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 35 points to 9,362. The S&P 500 Index shed 3 points to 1,009 while the Nasdaq Composite shed 8 points to 2,000. A few earnings are coming in from a number of retailers like Blockbuster, Nordstrom, DeVry, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, JC Penney, and Abercrombie & Fitch. Blockbuster is down 14% and Nordstrom, DeVry, Red Robin, and JC Penney are also lower. Urban Outfitters, Cheesecake Factory, Gap, Lowes, and Depot were all upgraded, but all five are modestly lower. Abercrombie is bucking the trend, trading up 5%. The financials are lower after another nice run. Genworth is down 5% on a downgrade. Citigroup is bucking the trend, trading higher on an upgrade from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. After the first half an hour the averages pushed lower on a disappointing consumer sentiment number. The Dow dropped 100 points. Boeing is lower by 4% after halting production on a flawed piece of the 787. The Nasdaq declined 28 points. A little bit of profit-taking to end the week. A few techs are trading higher. Autodesk is higher by 4% on earnings. Research in Motion is also higher for some reason. Through the morning the averages pushed lower. The Dow dropped 160 points while the Nasdaq declined 35 points. In the afternoon the averages remained weak with only a few stocks trading higher like Research in Motion and Abercrombie & Fitch. The financials remained in the red except for Citigroup, Bank of America, and BB&T. BB&T has been given permission by the FDIC to buy Colonial BancGroup on the cheap. Not sure why Bank of America is trading higher, but I'm not complaining. In the last hour the averages recovered quite a bit. Resilient. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 76 points to 9,321. The S&P 500 sank 9 points to 1,004 while the Nasdaq Compsite dropped 24 points to 1,986. For the week, the S&P 500 lost 0.6%, the Dow fell 0.5% and the Nasdaq slid 0.7%.

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