Day Traders Diary

5/28/10

U.S. stocks opened lower on the final trading day of May, the worst month of May since 1962. Weakness in the euro is causing the U.S. dollar to move higher hurting the major averages and commodities. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 29 points to 10,229. The S&P 500 Index declined 3 points to 1,099. The Nasdaq Composite declined 8 points to 2,269. BP is lower by 4% after surging 6% yesterday. Work continues to plug the oil spill in the Gulf. All the oils and most of the commodities are lower. In the retail space Guess and J. Crew are higher following earnings. Decker Outdoors is jumping 5% after announcing a 3 for 1 stock split. Target received an upgrade and Lowes hiked it's dividend, yet both are lower. The tech are lower except for Apple. The news keeps getting better for Apple as business remains white hot. Bank of America upgraded the stock with a $325 price target. Novellus is modestly lower even though they reported better than expected
earnings. Research in Motion, Nokia, and Redhat received upgrades, yet all three are modestly lower. The financials are quiet this morning. After the first hour the averages remain modestly in the red. Volume may trail off later in the day as investors take off early for the long Memorial Day Weekend. Through the morning the averages moved lower due in part to tensions between North and South Korea. During the lunch hour the Dow fell over 100 points on news Fitch downgraded Spain's debt. The debt downgrade caused the Euro currency to sell off sharply. Here we go again. Through the rest of the morning the averages remained weak. In the last hour the Dow sold off once again, then tried to recover, then sold off into the close. The Dow Jones finished down 122 points at 10136. The S&P 500 closed down 13 points at 1089. The Nasdaq declined 20 points to 2257. The Dow finished down modestly for the week while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 rallied half a percent. For the month it wasn't pretty. The Dow dropped 7.9%. The S&P 500 dropped 8% and the Nasdaq dropped 8.2%.

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