Day Traders Diary

12/14/10

U.S. stocks on Tuesday opened with mild gains after the government reported U.S. retail sales were more robust than anticipated in November. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 33 points to 11,459. The S&P 500 Index gained 2 points to 1,243. The Nasdaq Composite added 6 points to 2,631. The retailers look good except for consumer-electronics retailer Best Buy. Best Buy is down 15% after missing estimates and lowering guidance for 2011. Best Buy suppliers like Corning and Netgear are trading down in sympathy. Sara Lee, TRW Automotive, and Harley Davidson are higher on upgrades. Sanderson Farms is down 3% even though they beat estimates. The rest of the market is rather quiet. After the first hour the Dow started to slowly improve rising 50 points led by Boeing, Caterpillar, DuPont, IBM, Kraft, Microsoft, and Verizon. In fact very few Dow components are trading lower. The Nasdaq is up only 9 points. The financials are quiet. Bank of America and GE are modestly lower. Huntington Bancshares is down 3% after pricing a secondary offering. In the pharmaceutical space, Amgen is trading up 3% on positive data for one of their cancer drugs. The commodities are quiet this morning. Cliffs Natural Resources is up a percent, but that's about it for the sector. Through the morning the Dow remained strong up 65 points. The Nasdaq remains up 9 points. In the afternoon the averages remained strong until the Fed announced they would leave rates unchanged. The averages initially rallied, but then pulled back in the last hour, similar to yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 47 points at 11,476, lifted by a 1.7% gain in shares of Kraft Foods, and a 1.4% rise in shares of Microsoft. The S&P 500 index gained a point to 1,241, with the telecom and health-care sectors leading the gains. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 2 points to 2,627.

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