Closing bell: another rally and Nasdaq gets back its 2009 losses (AAPL, INTC, C, WPO, NYT, JASO)

Posted Mar 26th 2009 4:05PM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: After the Bell, Apple Inc (AAPL), Intel (INTC), Citigroup Inc. (C), New York Times'A' (NYT), S and P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ

After being down 25% for the year in early March, the NASDAQ is back to even for 2009. It is an extraordinary rally which shows that tech can still dig the market out of a funk. The fact that shares in companies like Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) and Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) are up for the year helps.

For the day:

Dow 7,908.55 +158.74 (2.05%)
S&P 500 832.72 +18.84 (2.31%)
Nasdaq 1,587.00 +58.05 (3.80%)

The only sector that struggled much during the day was the financial sector. Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) was off as much as 5%. It may be that the market is concerned about the possibility of much greater regulation of the sector by Washington or that there is a growing fear that commercial real estate loan defaults will cause a new wave of write-offs at large banks.

It says a lot about how perverse the market can be when shares of The Washington Post (NYSE: WPO) and New York Times (NYSE: NYT) rallied on news that they would fire people and cut salaries. The stories are tragic for the already beaten-down newspaper industry, but traders may have seen it as a trend that will give the properties a chance to survive.

The only sector that made a major move was solar power, mostly shares of companies based in China. Several news reports speculated that the US and China stimulus packages might funnel a lot of money to alternative energy. Industry leader JA Solar (NASDAQ: JASO) was up 40% to $3.77.

Two weeks ago, no one would have believed that the NASDAQ would trade in the green before the end of the quarter. It is a sign of how furious the rally has been.

Tags: china, nasdaq, solar, stimulus

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-26-2009 @ 5:20PM

Iridium said...

This rally is insane. It seems to be a huge jump caused by short sellers who are getting ready for terrible first quarter earnings from many corporations.

There is nothing real about this rally. The fact that a company can beat terribly low estimates is not a reason to cause many stocks to jump 14-20% in one day.

The market has lost all perspective. Oil again traded up almost $1.50 on the day. The jobs report showed even more people are out of work. If this is not held in check we will get massive inflation putting more people out of work and straining the economy further.

The casino that is wallstreet lives on only now people are making strange and outlandish bets. I don't know how anyone can show real economic data that can correspond to this rally.

This whole thing was kicked off by Citigroup saying it ran at a profit for the first two months of the year before taking any writedowns. Traders have to be lunatics to think the economy has turned the corner.

Best Buy's numbers were even complete BS. It traded up on numbers that would have been there if they didn't have to take a writedown. Here's a newsflash, if you had to spend money you can't say you earned what would have if you didn't spend.

We must be living in some alternate reality where made up money and government bailouts created from thin air is just as good as the real thing. We can just print trillions with no consequences. Can I just go to an ATM and get a million dollars? That is what Wall Street is doing. Just playing with made up money and calling it a profit.