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FeedPosted Jul 23rd 2010 5:00PM by Douglas McIntyre (RSS feed)
Filed under: General Electric (GE), S and P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ

Trading for the day started slowly. As is true most summer Fridays, there was not much news and few earnings announcements. Those who had to work on Wall Street spent the morning waiting for stress test data on European banks. The data was due at noon and there were no surprises. Seven smaller financial firms out of 91 did not make the cut. None of the firms was considered strategically important.
The S&P did move about 1,100, a sign that the movement up in the market has been steady enough to move above a psychological hurdle. But, the move was on so little volume that early Monday will be a better barometer of the market's sentiment.
The numbers:
Dow 10,424.62 +102.32 (0.99%)
S&P 500 1,102.66 +8.99 (0.82%)
Nasdaq 2,269.47 +23.58 (1.05%)
Continue reading Closing Bell: Slight Climb Throughout the Day (GE)
Posted Feb 2nd 2010 4:00PM by Jon Ogg (RSS feed)
Filed under: General Electric (GE), Ford Motor (F), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), TD AmeriTrade Holding (AMTD)

Today was helped in part by housing data for December showing gains on the existing home sales front, but was mostly a sentiment reversal. The S&P closing back above 1,085 yesterday created the hope that a floor was being put in and the stocks followed some strength in Europe to post larger gains.
Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:
Dow 10,297.00 +111.47 (1.09%)
S&P 500 1,103.11 +13.93 (1.28%)
Nasdaq 2,189.68 +18.48 (0.85%)
Top Analyst Upgrades/Downgrades
Top Day Trader AlertsContinue reading Closing Bell: Technical Relief On Groundhog Day (GE, JPM, F, AMTD, RPRX, LXK)
Posted Sep 30th 2009 6:20PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Major Movement, Forecasts, Good news, Market Matters, Money and Finance Today, S and P 500, DJIA, Housing, Recession

The market was able to stage a late day rally which erased some of its earlier losses, but still ended the day in the red, with all
3 major indexes closing down on the day.
September is typically not a good month for the market, but even with today's losses this September was positive, as more and more investors have started to believe the economy is coming out of its recession.
Continue reading Market ends the day lower, but up for the month
Posted Aug 28th 2009 2:45PM by John Jagerson (RSS feed)
Filed under: Options, S and P 500

The S&P 500 may be down slightly this Friday afternoon after a fairly flat week, but that does not mean that all traders are bearish. In fact, option traders still appear to be quite bullish. Investors buying call options still outnumber put option buyers by more than 2 to 1 in the
S&P 500 SPDRs ETF (
SPY) for the September at-the-money strike price.
When a traders buys a call option they think the stock is going to go up, and when they buy puts they think the stock may go down. The ratio between calls and puts is often looked at as a reflection of underlying trader sentiment. Significant changes in this balance may indicate that sentiment is changing.
Continue reading S&P 500 option traders still bullish
Posted Jul 13th 2009 2:40PM by Todd Harrison (RSS feed)
Filed under: Morgan Stanley (MS), S and P 500
This post was written by Minyanville contributor Fil Zucchi.It's well known by now that the corporate bond market, from high yield to investment grade, has had a mind numbing move up, and this rally is beginning to be used as an explanation/reason why the equity markets will have no choice but to follow suit. To keep things in perspective, here are some comments from last week conference call by the
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:
MS) corporate credit team:
- Despite the deleveraging process many companies have undertaken, on an EBITDA/Debt ratio junk rated companies are as leveraged as they have ever been thanks to the "complete trashing" of cash flows. MS expects leverage ratios to rise even further and, therefore, from a "leverage-risk to yield" basis, junk spreads are way too tight to reward buyers for the underlying default risk.
- In the residential Option ARMs market, delinquency rates as a percentage of original balances are running higher than they were in subprime. On the other side of the ledger – and confirming what is intuitively logical – recoveries as a percentage of balances are significantly lower and falling, which will continue to put heavy pressure on home values. In the Alt-A market things are not going that well either.
- In the Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) world, Standard & Poor recently implemented new tests to determine the downgrade of various CMBS vintages. The test for the 2004 issues was relaxed, which is likely to spare from downgrade 65% of AAA rated CMBS which had been put on negative watch. Under the prior, stricter test, 80% of the watch list issues were in danger of downgrades. Are we really to believe that the relaxation of the testing standards for issues that are coming up for refi between now and the next two years are just a coincidence?
- What caritas the S & P showed toward the 2004 CMBS it apparently took it out on the mezzanine CMBS of 2006 and later. Most AAA mezz tranches are or will be downgraded to A/BBB- grades, while all junior AAAs tranches have gone straight to junk.
Posted May 13th 2009 5:00PM by Sheldon Liber (RSS feed)
Filed under: Other Issues, Rumors, Rants and Raves, Market Matters, Money and Finance Today, S and P 500, Recession, NASDAQ, Financial Crisis

The market is down again today and there are millions of people trying to figure out why. Some will tell you they know why and give you a plausible rationale. There may be bits of truth here and there but there is also an arbitrary nature too. If not arbitrary, then haphazard.
The market may be down because nobody in Washington - Obama, Benanke or Geitner - made a speech today pounding the drum for a brighter economic outlook.
It could be because oil prices have been slowly rising again as inventories are drawn down.
Continue reading Quick Take: Why is the market down today?
Posted May 4th 2009 6:00PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Major Movement, International Markets, Good news, Middle East, Market Matters, Money and Finance Today, Commodities, Oil, Housing, Recession, Financial Crisis

Oil prices have been steadily heading higher the past month, and today was no exception, as the precious crude managed to close today's trading at its
highest value in 2009.
While we are still no where near the record high prices we were seeing last summer, oil has managed to slowly creep its way up to $54.58 a barrel. This was after a rise on the day of $1.73, and it is a clear sign that analysts believe that global demand is about to move in oil's favor.
Continue reading Oil hits high for the year, as S&P goes positive
Posted Feb 17th 2009 12:05PM by Brent Archer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Good news, Options, Technical Analysis, Oil, S and P 500
Diamond Offshore Drilling (NYSE:
DO -
option chain) shares have been just about flat today after Standard & Poor's (NYSE:
MHP) announced that
the company will be added to the S&P 500 Index on a date still to be determined, replacing
Weatherford International Ltd. (NYSE:
WFT). This usually causes a surge in stock value as all the ETFs that track the S&P 500 now have to rush to add DO positions.
While DO is not rising today, it is also not falling sharply like the rest of the market, especially when compared to its peers like
Transocean (NYSE:
RIG), which just reported
slowing earnings today and is down by more than 5%. If you think that DO won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on that stock.
Continue reading Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO) to be added to S&P 500
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