Day Traders Diary
5/21/10
U.S. stocks on Friday started to rally following a sharp opening drop, with investors reacting to a reverse higher by Europe's common currency, the euro. Still on track for weekly losses of 5% and more, the major indexes edged up less than 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gain 28 points to 10,096. The S&P 500 Index rose 8 points to 1,079. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 11 points to 2,215. The news isn't much different from yesterday, but investors are in a much better mood. The financials traded higher shortly after the open with the Senate voting on their bank reform bill last night. Wells Fargo is up 4% after the Treasury sold their warrants in the big bank. Keycorp is up 5% on an upgrade. The commodities are perfroming well after getting clobbered the last several weeks. Freeport McMoRan is jumping 6%. The oils are higher expect for BP. A number of techs reported earnings last night including Dell, Marvell, and Salesforce.com. All three traded lower last night, but only Dell is trading lower this morning. In the retail space Gap, Pacific Sunwear, Ann Taylor, Red Robin Gourmet Burger, and Aeropostale all beat expectations. Red Robin and Pacific Sunwear are lower, but the other three are higher. William Sonoma is higher on an upgrade. Through the morning the rally started to kick in. The Dow jumped 50 points. The Nasdaq rose 25 points. The financials are up over 2.5%. The techs look good except for Google. Google keeps pushing lower. During the lunch hour the Dow rose over a 100 points before pulling back. very few stocks are in the red. In the tech sector Dell, Microsoft, and Cisco System are in the red. Google actually moved into the green after the FTC gave them permission to acquire AdMob. In the middle of the afternoon the averages gave up a lot of their gains. Entering the last hour the averages were clinging to minor gains. This is not a good bounce. In the last hour the averages did fall into the red, but no heavy selling. The sellers are aghausted. In the last 15 minutes the Dow went from unchanged to up 100 points, closing at the highs of the day. I did not see that coming. Some of this must be attributed to todays option expiration. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 125 points, or 1.3%, to 10,193, with a 5.9% gain in J.P. Morgan Chase leading the index higher. The S&P 500 added 16 points, or 1.5%, to 1,087, with a more than 3% surge in financials leading all industry groups higher. The Nasdaq Composite added 25 points, or 1.1%, to 2,229. For the week, however, the Dow lost 4%, the S&P 500 fell 4.2% and the Nasdaq slid 5%.All comments contained herein are for informational purposes only, and should not be considered as a solicitation to buy or sell any security. The firm does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information or make any warranties regarding results from it's usage.