Day Traders Diary

2/2/11

U.S. stocks started mildly lower Wednesday after climbing to their highest finish in more than two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 7 points to 12,032. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index declined 3 points to 1,304. The Nasdaq Composite declined 4 points to 2,746. The earnings keep coming. Aflac, Broadcom, Allergan, Marathon Oil, Whirlpool, Hospira, and Genworth are all lower on earnings. Some stocks are higher following earnings including Western Union, Time Warner, Electronic Arts, Hershey, Mattel, and Suncor Energy. Electronic Arts is jumping 15%. The commodities look great. Freeport McMoran split two for one this morning. Transocean is modestly lower on a downgrade, but the rest of the oils look good. The techs look good this morning. The chips look good even though Broadcom is lower. The financials are all lower this morning. GE is unchanged on an upgrade with a $25 price target. Blackstone is up a percent on an upgrade. In the retail space Tupperware keeps moving higher thanks to an upgrade this morning. AnnTaylor lifted sales guidance, but the stock is lower. After the first hour the averages recouped their losses moving into the green. Resilient market. Through the morning the averages continued to hug the unchanged level. The commodities look good. The techs look good except for Apple. The financials are still in the red except for Goldman Sachs which is perking up. In the afternoon the averages kept vacillating around the unchanged level. The bad weather in Chicago and the Northeast has many investors staying at home today. Even though we haven't gone anywhere, seven Dow components had new 52 week highs. Investors love the big cap stocks once again. The Dow ended up a point at 12,041, its third-straight day of gains, led by more than 1% gains in the shares of Walt Disney and Caterpillar. The S&P 500 closed down 3 points at 1,304, with tech stocks the only sector to nudge higher. The Nasdaq Composite slid a point to 2,750.

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