Day Traders Diary

4/23/10

U.S. stocks open flat, but the news keeps coming in better than expected. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 5 points to 11,139. The S&P 500 Index opened flat at 1,208. The Nasdaq Composite held steady at 2,519. Plenty of spectacular earnings and upgrades this morning. In the financial sector American Express and Capital One are sharply higher following strong earnings. TR Price is higher following earnings. Huntington Bancshares is jumping 4% on an upgrade. Wilmington Trust and Travelers are lower after missing estimates. Stifel upgraded a number of banks including Wells Fargo, KeyCorp, and Suntrust. In the retail space Deckers Outdoors is jumping 8% following great earnings. Columbia Sportswear is higher following earnings. AnnTaylor is higher following an upgrade. Costco is higher after upping their dividend. In the tech sector Microsoft easily beat, but the stock is modestly lower. PMC Sierra is also modestly lower following earnings. Not Apple, however. Apple keeps pushing higher making new highs every day. Western Digital is jumping 8% on an upgrade. Nokia is lower on a downgrade. After the first half an hour better than expected housing numbers sent the averages into the green. The homebuilders are all performing well. After the first hour the averages gave up most of their gains. Through the morning more of the same. Not many stocks are in the green. In the afternoon the averages slowly improved. Heading into the last hour the averages were solidly in the green. Eight Dow components are at new 52 week highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 69 points at 11,204. For the week, the Dow gained 1.7%, marking the 8th straight week of gains for the blue-chip average, its longest winning streak since the 8 weeks ended Jan. 16, 2004. The S&P 500 index gained 8 points to 1,217, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 11 points to 2,530. For the week, the Nasdaq rose 2%, also the 8th straight week of gains for the tech-heavy benchmark. The S&P 500 gained 2.1% for the week, after falling 0.2% last week.

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