Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets
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Good Morning! |
Wal-Mart Announces Strong Quarter… Fed Cuts Make Losers of Treasury Note Holders… Fidel Castro Steps Down… Pakistani Voters Reject Musharraf in Vote… Lower Rates = Lower Dollar… Writedown Cut into Credit Suisse Profits… Martha Stewart Acquires Emeril… MBIA Gets New CEO… Market Testing Wizards Open for Business… Will Computer, Server Sales Boost HP Earnings?
Asian stocks up… European stocks up… Greenbacks moving lower against the Euro, yen… And the futures are trending higher in the hour before the bell.
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TradingMarkets 5 Business Stories You Need to Know |
Wal-Mart Earnings Beat Estimates – Bloomberg
Sales of groceries and consumer electronic helped drive Wal-Mart’s quarterly net income higher, the company said in its earnings announcement this morning before the bell. Wal-Mart’s Long Term PowerRating marks the stock as a just-above-average opportunity for investors right now. The stock’s PowerRating has remained very consistent over the past several months.
Investors Optimistic Toward HP – Bloomberg
Reports of rising computer and servers sales have many expecting positive news from Hewlett Packard’s earnings announcement later this morning. Like Wal-Mart, shares of Hewlett-Packard suggest a stock that will perform about as well as the average stock over the next year. Hewlett-Packard’s Long Term PowerRating has switched back and forth between 6 and 7–both average scores–since late November.
Has Bernanke Broken the Greenback? – Daily FX
Helicopter Ben’s talk of a weakening economy coupled with his Fed’s willingness to–and likelihood of–cutting the cash rate further leave currency traders little reason to be bullish on the dollar in the near-term.
Medco Health Sees Revenue Gains – CNN Money
Driven by increased volume of mail-order prescriptions, Medco Health Solutions saw revenue gains for the fourth quarter, even factoring in increased use of lower-revenue generic drugs. Based on its Long Term PowerRating, Medco Health Solutions is one of the best stocks an investor can own (full disclosure, we own shares of Medco Health Solutions in our Live Blue Chip Portfolio). The high Long Term PowerRating on this stock notes it as a stock that has a very high degree of likelihood that it will be higher in a year’s time.
Whole Foods Markets Downgraded – Houston Chronicle
Lehman Brothers downgraded shares of Whole Foods Markets to “underweight” from “equal weight” in the days leading up to the company’s first quarter 2008 earnings report this morning. Whole Foods Markets has seen its Long Term PowerRating move lower as the stock has advanced over the past month. Although the stock still has a Long Term PowerRating in the average range, the downward trend in the stock’s PowerRating over the past month suggests that there are better opportunities for investors right now.
For more stories as they happen, go to our Breaking News section.
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TradingMarkets 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Today |
Here are 7 stocks for traders for today from TradingMarkets.com:
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Fossil
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PowerRating) reports earnings on Tuesday before the bell; look for $0.67EPS. -
Medco Health Solutions
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PowerRating) reported EPS of $0.38 Tuesday morning before the stock market opened, falling two cents shy of analyst expectations. -
Ex-items, Medtronic
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PowerRating) reported EPS of $0.63 before the bell on Tuesday morning, beating estimates. -
OfficeMax
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PowerRating) reported quarterly results on Tuesday before the bell, announcing adjusted net income of $0.65 EPS. -
Marvel Enterprises
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PowerRating) is set to report $0.29 EPS before the market opens on Tuesday. - Steve Madden
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PowerRating) reported $0.23 EPS Tuesday morning before the market opened. - Wal-Mart
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PowerRating) reported quarerly earnings that were in line with analyst estimates for $1.02 EPS, though full year earnings fell short of expectations.
For a list of today’s highest PowerRating stocks, click here.
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TradingMarkets 5 Top PowerRatings Stocks for Today |
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Company
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Symbol | PowerRatings |
| XRite | XRIT | 8 |
| THQ | THQI | 8 |
| Learning Tree | LTRE | 8 |
| DeVry | DV | 8 |
| Delta Petroleum | DPTR | 8 |
| » View More Stocks |
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TradingMarkets Tracking the Wizards |
Market Testing Wizards to the Rescue! – TradingMarkets
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Lampert Lowers Citi Exposure – New York Times
Does news that hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert has reduced his holdings in Citigroup by more than 30% mean that Lampert love affair with the troubled money center bank has reached an end? The company’s stock has moved consistently lower since before Lampert began building his position in May of last year.
View Portfolios of Prominent Investors
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TradingMarkets Playbook |
The futures are up big in the pre-market. At first blush, this before-the-bell bullishness seems to be a carryover from the late rally on Friday that brought the markets up from session lows by the close of trading. At the same time, we compare the number of stocks that are up 10% or more in the past five days to the number of stocks that are down 10% or more in the past five days and see that stocks, in general, are extended to the upside, with far more stocks spoting low Short Term PowerRatings than high Short Term PowerRatings.
Evidence of this can also be seen by comparing the number of stocks that have 2-period Relative Strength Index values that are above 98, reflecting extreme “overboughtness” compared to the number of stocks that have 2-period Relative Strength Index values that are below 2, a sign of being exceptionally oversold.
This means that, despite the bullishness of the pre-market futures, the smart bets are against those weak stocks that are masquerading as strong stocks. This means that wagers against stocks that are below their 200-day moving average, yet are experiencing five or more consecutive highs or large gaps up make more sense for traders right now than trying to chase stocks that have already advanced.
David Penn is Senior Editor at TradingMarkets.com.
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