Day Traders Diary

2/1/11

U.S. stocks on Tuesday started the new month on a high note as Wall Street's focus shifted back to optimism about the global recovery ahead of U.S. manufacturing data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 66 points to 11,958. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 10 points to 1,296. The Nasdaq Composite added 26 points to 2,726. Everything, literally everything is working today. The commodity space is running again. Archer Daniels Midland is up 7% after beating estimates. Patriot Coal is up 5% on an upgrade. Potash and Valero are up 2% on upgrades. All the commodities are higher steel, gold, coal, fertilizers, and copper play Freeport McMoran. BP is one of the few commodity plays not working after missing earnings estimates. The oil giant did raise their dividend. The higher oil prices don't seem to be hurting the transportation stocks. UPS is jumping 3% following earnings and a share buyback. China tech giant Baidu.com is jumping 8% following earnings. Lexmark is up 10% after easily beating estimates. The new chip favorite, Arm Holdings is up 7% on earnings. Novellus is up 4% on earnings. AMD is up 4% on an upgrade. Google, Apple, and IBM look great. In the healthcare space Biogen and Pfizer are higher following earnings. In the retail space Tupperware is jumping 14% on earnings. Wolverine Worldwide is up 8% on earnings. Owens Corning and Mens Wearhouse are higher on upgrades. At 10 o'clock, a better than expected manufacturing number sent the averages higher. Through the morning the averages pushed higher with the Dow rising 100 points back toward that 12000 level. The Nasdaq is up 40 points. The S&P 500 is right back at that 1300 number. During the lunch hour the major averages broke through resistance with the Dow jumping 150 points and the Nasdaq rising 50 points. Everything is looking great. Easy day to make money. Heading into the last hour the averages pulled back from the highs only to rally once again. The first day of a new month has been very good to the markets since September. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 148 points, or 1.25%, at 12,040.its first close above 12,000 since June 19, 2008. The S&P 500 ended up 21 points, or 1.67%, at 1307, its first close above 1,300 since Aug. 28, 2008. The Nasdaq Composite rallied 51 points to 2751. The Nasdaq is up 31% since the start of September. Not bad.

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