Wall Street Journal:
Either expectations for consumer spending during the crucial holiday season have gotten too high, or consumer companies are being overly conservative in forecasting the fourth quarter to prompt a bigger surprise when they report the results. Likely, there’s a bit of both going on, and it’s gotten investors increasingly ski (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
Stronger U.S. dollar, disappointment with Dell’s 3Q results, weakness in Asian markets overnight and mixed picture in European trading all among the elements contributing to a negative premarket tone for US stocks. Dollar index up almost 0.5% at 75.64, gold & oil backing down. No economic data due today, but there’s a lot j (Read More)
TraderFeed:
From 12 N CT forward, it was easy to look for a second leg down in the ES futures (top chart). Note, however, that the correlated asset classes--euro (middle chart) and gold (bottom chart)--had already rallied and taken out their morning highs. That suggested that the drop in stocks was not part of a fundamental revaluati (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
U.S. stocks fall, although late buying limits the losses, as the dollar strengthens and chip stocks drag down tech shares after BofA-Merrill downgrades a number of chip makers. DJIA loses 94 (0.9%) to 10332, S&P 500 falls 15 (1.3%) to 1095, Nasdaq Comp loses 36 (1.7%) to 2157. Treasurys rally, some T-bill rates turn negativ (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
In the old days, with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down 1.75% through midday, chances were pretty good that gold prices would find a “safe haven” buying bid. That was then. This is now. Instead, gold prices were also down, off about 0.6%.The link these days is the dollar, and the correlations between the dollar and (Read More)
TraderFeed:
The recent post highlighted the market's breakout move; those same qualities are common among trend days. Note from the FinViz spectrum display that stocks within the major sectors are almost uniformly lower over the day. That tells us that stocks overall are undergoing revaluation; this is not mere sector reallocation.. (Read More)
TraderFeed:
As regular readers know, the NYSE TICK is one of my favorite measures of short-term stock market sentiment. Here we see TICK on a 3-minute basis; note how the bars largely stay below the horizontal zero (purple) line. A quick look at the distribution of TICK values is afforded by the moving average of TICK (blue line), wh (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
Energy and materials sector leading the broad weakness in the markets early. Materials are off by 2.3%, lead by metals firms such as Allegheny Technologies (-4.8%), Titanium Metals (-4.1) and Alcoa (-3.9%). Energy sector is off 2.2%, with energy firms like Massey Energy (-4.6%), Nabors Industries (-4.6%) and Marathon Oil (- (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
If they base their decision on peer performance, the answer is probably no. Thursday’s Writing on the Wall reminds readers that investors who bought into recent public offerings by private equity or hedge funds early lost big.Leon Black’s Apollo Management is reportedly exploring listing on the New York Stock Exchange follo (Read More)
TraderFeed:
Recently, I've highlighted non-confirmations in the stock market, as new stock highs in the large cap indexes were not followed by highs among small caps and many stock sectors. What we also see is that the recent highs in large cap stocks have not been followed by new dollar lows against the euro (top chart), yen (second (Read More)
Top Stocks:
I've got great news... On Wednesday morning, Bank of America announced they'll only need another $34 billion more from Uncle Sam. Somehow that's bullish news, according to CEO Ken Lewis. The truth is, while we're not out of the woods just yet, we are finally starting to see some signs of a slow recovery. Amex, JP (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
Tech stocks are in focus after Bank of America Merrill Lynch issued a research note in which the brokerage takes a more cautious stance on the semiconductor sector.BofA Merrill Lynch also downgraded stocks, including Intel and ASML, say traders. The note sparked concerns that offset Infineon’s overall positive fourth-quarte (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
Stronger U.S. dollar has the bulls thinking about staying on the bench Thursday — premarket U.S. stock futures point to some moderate weakness when regular trading begins. Oil and gold also weaker with the dollar index up roughly 0.4% at 75.48. Weekly jobless claims due at 8:30 a.m., with a slight increase expected. Beyond (Read More)
stocks and things:
We had another late-day flurry of buying, but overall it was a very lazy day of trading. We had a little red on the screens, but it was very minor and hardly deserves the description of "profit-taking." On the other hand, we didn't have much energy either, other than in the last few minutes of trading.Agriculture stocks wer (Read More)
Wall Street Journal:
U.S. stocks slide, even as the dollar does the same, after a sharply weaker report on housing starts adds another brick to the wall of worry over the recovery. DJIA slips 11 to 10426, S&P 500 eases less than 1 to 1109.80, Nasdaq Comp drops 11 (0.5%) to 2193. Volume’s low, as it has been just about every day this month. Gold (Read More)