Day Traders Diary

11/3/09

U.S. stocks started lower on Tuesday, with Warren Buffett's deal for railway Burlington Northern Santa Fe only slightly offsetting a decline in financial shares, hit in part by poor results from Swiss lender UBS. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 59 points to 9,729. The S&P 500 Index fell 7 points to 1,035, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 14 points to 2,034. First the merger front, Burlington Northern is jumping 28%. Berkshire is modestly higher. All the railroads are higher on this merger news. CSX and Louisiana Pacific were both upgraded this morning. Genesee Wyoming is up 7% following earnings. Another deal announced last night was Stanley buying Black & Decker. Black & Decker is up 23% while Stanley Works is up 4%. A third deal announced today is the acquisition of Landry Seafood. The stock is jumping 27%. Outside the merger news, most sectors are lower. The financials are lower once again. UBS is down 5% on a $552 million loss. Mastercard is down 2% following earnings. The techs are lower once again. Plenty of downgrades within the chips including Intel, Micron, and Sandisk. Two days in a row, an analyst defended Research in Motion. The stock is rebounding 3%. Plenty of other earnings from the likes of Viacom, Oshkosh, Cedar Fair, Archer Daniels, Frontier, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Polo, Rowan, Diebold, Marathon Oil, Texas Roadhouse, Herbalife, Cablevision, and Martin Marietta. Texas Roadhouse is up 15% while Cedar Fair is down 13%. Other than that, nothing is moving much. The bulls are on a break. After the first hour, the Dow was down 30 points. The Nasdaq declined 9 points. Through the morning the averages remain in the red moving with the U.S. dollar. In the afternoon the avergaes slowly recovered with the Nasdaq moving into the green in the last hour. Research in Motion is jumping 7%. Google is higher as well. The averages continued to improve into the close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 17 points at 9,771. The S&P 500 added 2 points to 1,045, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 8 points to 2,057.

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