Day Traders Diary

2/25/10

The markets dropped on the open due to an unexpected rise in weekly jobless claims and sovereign debt troubles overseas. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 158 points to 10,215. The S&P 500 Index declined 16 points to 1,088. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 33 points to 2,202. The averages look awful, but there are a few stocks trading higher. Limited, Blackstone, Cablevision, Dr. Pepper Snapple, Hyatt Hotel, Kohls, Newmont Mining, Cartiers, Mylan, and Steven Madden are all higher following earnings. A number of stocks were upgraded and trading higher including Big Lots, CME Group, and Nike. On the downside we have Blockbuster, Salesforce.com, Heinz, Dynegy, Safeway, Foster Wheeler, KBR, and Tim Hortons following earnings. Palm is down 17% after lowering guidance. That's not good. After the first hour the averages remain weak near the lows of the day. Coke is trading down 3% after agreeing to buy back their North America bottling company. Coke Enterprises is up 32% on that news. Through the morning the averages remained weak near the lows of the day. In the afternoon more of the same. One sector perking up is the commodities. Gold has turned around. As the afternoon progressed the averages slowly improved. Apple rebounded on rumors of a stock split. In the last hout the averages continued to slowly improve with a few more stocks moving into the green. The commodities look good. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 53 points at 10,321. The S&P 500 Index shed 2 points to end at 1,102, while the Nasdaq Composite Index lost a point to close at 2,234.

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