Day Traders Diary
8/13/10
Triskaidekaphobia or the fear of the number 13 particularly on a Friday. We'll see if its good or bad luck for the major averages today. At least on the open, U.S. stocks opened slightly higher following a week of heavy losses, as the latest batch of reports on retail sales and consumer prices did little to offset rising concern about slowing growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 3 points to 10,323, lifted by 1% gain in shares of Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard. The S&P 500 index inched up 9 cents to 1,084, lifted by the energy and financial sectors, while consumer discretionary weighed on the broad average. The Nasdaq Composite declined 8 point to 2,181. A number of earnings out last night and this morning. It's the haves and have nots. Nvidia and Autodesk are both up over 4% following earnings. KLA-Tencor is higher on an upgrade. IBM is making a small acquisition for them for $480 million. Dynegy is jumping 58% after agreeing to be bought out for $4.5 a share. Unfortunately the stock is down 85% in the last two years. In the retail space, Dillards, JCPenney, and Nordstrom are all down following earnings. DeVry is lower following earnings. Eli Lilly is down after lowering guidance. At 10 o'clock, better than expected consumer sentiment did little to lift the averages. In fact they fell into the red. Through the morning the averages remained stuck in the red. It's a quiet morning. Typical Friday in August. In the afternoon the Dow inched into the green only to sell off in the last hour. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 16 points at 10,303, weighed down by more than 1% drops in shares of Home Depot, Intel, and American Express. For the week, the Dow industrials slumped 3.3%, and is now down 1.2% year to date. The S&P 500 index lost 4 points to 1,079, weighed by the consumer discretionary sector. For the week, the S&P 500 declined 3.8%, leading the broad-market gauge to a loss of 3.2% for the year. The Nasdaq Composite fell 16 points to 2,173. The tech-heavy index fell the hardest of the three major averages this week, losing 5%. For the year so far, the Nasdaq is down 4.2%.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.