The sages say to sell the news and have started calling the market grossly overbought on the near-term, yet stock enthusiasm is at the exact opposite of how negative things were 6 weeks ago. We have 6 million on the jobless claims now, although this week showed a real decline in new claims. The rally came on late in the day after the market was down triple-digits at one point. Here are the unofficial closing bell levels:Dow 8,125.43 +95.81 (1.19%)
S&P 500 865.29 +13.23 (1.55%)
Nasdaq 1,670.44 +43.64 (2.68%)
Top Analyst Calls
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) beat earnings at $0.40 EPS vs. $0.32 estimates, and revenues came in at $26.9 billion rather than the estimates of $22.96 billion. Despite Jamie Dimon being VERY cautious on the conference call, shares were up over 3% at $33.63 shortly before the close today.
Rosetta Stone Inc. (NYSE: RST) priced a 6.25 million share IPO at some $18.00 per share, above the $15 to $17 expected price range. There was talk of a premium, but this stock was north of $25.00 shortly before the close today.
Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) took another downgrade today. We saw the coffee retailer get downgraded at UBS to a 'Neutral' from a prior 'Buy' rating after Deutsche Bank cut it to 'Sell' yesterday. Shares were actually back up to flat at $11.66 late in the day after being down 2% earlier.
Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) lost money with -$0.12 net EPS and -$0.03 EPS from operations. The estimate was a -$0.01 number, but investors are not used to losses here at Southwest. Revenues were also lower at -6.8% or $2.357 billion. Shares were down 7% at $7.07 late in the day.
Regions Financial Corp. (NYSE: RF) filed its annual meeting presentation this morning in an SEC filing, and said it will report a profit for the quarter ended March 31, 2009. The estimate from Wall Street was -$0.42 EPS. So while this was very unclear and undetermined, shares soared today. This stock was up way over 30% at $6.97 late in the day.
Closing Bell: Economic Catapult for Thanksgiving & Black Friday (WMT, TGT, GRMN, GOOG, MSFT)
Deere up on Q4 earnings performance
Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn will go public (at some point)
