Day Traders Diary

12/21/10

U.S. stocks opened higher on Tuesday with sentiment bolstered by a round of corporate deals, including Toronto-Dominion Bank's $6.3 billion purchase of Chrysler Financial. It's getting a little crazy now that we go up every day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 38 points to 11,516. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 4 points to 1,251 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 9 points to 2,658. Toronto-Dominion is trading up 2.5% following their acquisition. The financials in general are performing well. All the big banks are up over a percent. Paychex is up a percent on an upgrade. Mastercard is unchanged on an upgrade. On the earnings front Adobe and Jabil Circuit are up over 4% following strong numbers. Sandisk is jumping 5% on an upgrade. Micron and Microsoft are higher on upgrades. Apple and Google are higher. Shocker. In the retail space, Darden Restaurants is down 5% on in line numbers. CarMax is dropping 9% following earnings. Skechers is down 8% on a downgrade. Urban Outfitters is lower on a downgrade. A couple of retailers are higher. Carnival is up 3% following strong guidance. Papa Johns is also higher following quarterly guidance. Crocs is higher on an upgrade. After the first hour the averages remain strong with very few stocks lower. One sector trading lower are the corporate bond funds. The big transition from bonds to stocks seems to be underway. Through the morning the averages remained strong inching higher. No sellers out there. In the afternoon, more of the same. The averages remained strong, actually improving in the last hour. I guess we're never going down again. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 55 points at 11,533, lifted by shares of Bank of America. The S&P 500 ended up 7 points to 1,254, led by more than 1% gains in its financials and materials sectors. The Nasdaq Composite ended up 18 points at 2,667.

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