Day Traders Diary

4/16/10

Todays a day for profit-taking after six days in a row of gains. Worries about the future growth of Internet giant Google and the good earnings news priced into shares of Bank of America and GE have the averages selling off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13 points to 11,130. The S&P 500 declined 3 points to 1,207. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 9 points to 2,506. Google is down 5%, Bank of America is down a percent, and GE is lower by 2%. Very few stocks are in the green even though the news is great. In the tech sector Dell and IBM are modestly higher thanks to upgrades. Everything else is lower. Intel is lower. AMD is down 6% following earnings. Nvidia is down 5% due to a downgrade. The financials are seeing some good profit-taking this morning. American Express is lower even though credit losses are improving. XL Capital is unchanged on an upgrade. Visa and Mastercard are modestly lower on downgrades. Charles Schwab modestly lower on a
positive article on Barrons Online. After the first hour the averages dropped sharply following fraud charges against Goldman Sachs from the SEC. Goldman dropped a quick 7% within minutes. In the retail space Krispy Kreme is lower even though they made money. Callaway is lower on in line earnings. Christopher & Bank is modestly lower after beating estimates. Mattel is higher following earnings. Walmart and Gamestop are modestly higher on upgrades. Through the morning the over hang from Goldman's SEC charges sent the averages lower. The Dow dropped over 100 points. The Nasdaq declined 36 points. The financial index is down nearly 4%. Ouch. In the afternoon the Dow dropped over 150 points below 11000. Coke is the only Dow component trading higher. No rebound in the financials. Very few stocks are in the green. Through the afternoon the averages stabilized. Now four Dow components are in the green including IBM which reports earnings on Monday. In the last hour the averages sold back off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 125 points, or 1.1%, at 11,018. The S&P 500 index fell 19 points, or 1.6%, to 1,192, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 34 points, or 1.4%, to 2,481. For the week, the broad S&P 500 fell 0.2%, interrupting 6 straight week of gains. The Dow industrials gained 0.2% and the Nasdaq rose 1.1% on the week.

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