Day Traders Diary

10/21/09

U.S. stocks struggled on the start for a second straight day even as earnings keep coming in better than expected. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 4 points to 10,045. The S&P 500 Index added a point to 1,092. The Nasdaq Composite Index added 5 points to 2,168. The financials are mixed this morning. Morgan Stanley and US Bancorp are both up 6% on strong earnings. Sallie Mae is jumping 17% on better than expected earnings. Visa is higher after raising their dividend. Wells Fargo is unchanged on better than expected earnings. Northern Trust is down 6% after missing estimates. Jefferies is lower on a downgrade. The techs are performing well. Yahoo is jumping 4% after better than expected earnings. Sandisk is jumping 10% on strong earnings. IBM, Apple, Amazon, Google, Research in Motion, and Ebay are all trading higher. Cisco and Netsuite are higher on upgrades. Allegheny Tech is lower after missing esimates. The healthcare and pharmaceutical stocks continue to struggle. Gilead Science, Eli Lilly, and Genzyme are lower following earnings. The list of other companies reporting earnings include Northrop Grumman, St. Jude, Boeing, Altria, Tupperware, Stanley Works, Elan, and Forest Labs. Tupperware is jumping 7%. After the first hour the averages pushed higher. The Dow jumped 50 points. The Nasdaq rose 20 points. Resilient market. In the afternoon, the averages remained in the green until the last hour when Dick Bove downgraded Wells Fargo to a sell. Wells Fargo dropped nearly 5% in a matter of minutes taking the banks and the major averages with it. Heading into the close, no rebound. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 77 points at 9,969. The S&P 500 Index fell 7 points to 1,083. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 10 points to 2,153.

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