Day Traders Diary

9/27/10

U.S. stocks opened mildly lower on Monday, with Wall Street retreating some after last week's strong gains, as health-care stocks in particular weighed on the market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2 points to 10,857. The S&P 500 declined a point to 1,147. The Nasdaq Composite declined 2 points to 2,378. Another week another acquisition. Unilever is buying Alberto Culver for $3.7 billion. Alberto is trading up 19%. IBM announced a small acquisition this morning. IBM is actually making a new 52 week high along with Apple so the techs are performing well this morning. Baidu is up 4% to a new high thanks to an upgrade. Google continues to move higher as well. In the commodity space, the fertilizers are performing well. Agrium is jumping 2% to new highs. LDK Solar is jumping 6% after announcing a financing deal in China. In the transportation space Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are not reacting after receiving upgrades. JetBlue is up 6% on a positive Barrons article. After the first half an hour the averages remain in the red. The large cap financials are lower except for Goldman Sachs. Franklin Resources is higher on an upgrade. Through the morning and into the afternoon the averages remain quiet. The end of the quarter is on Thursday so many money managers are done and just waiting for the end of the month. In the last hour the averages moved lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 48 points at 10,812. There were 24 decliners among the Dow's 30 components, led by a 2.7% drop in Bank of America shares. The S&P 500 index dropped 6 points to 1,142 with the financial sector weighing the most, down 1.2%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 11 points to 2,369.

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