Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets
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Good Morning! |
Oracle Acquires BEA… Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Profits Fall… Fed’s Beige Book Sees Modest Growth in Q4… Bernanke Testifies Before House Committee… Housing Starts and Jobless Claims Announced Today… TD Ameritrade Beats Expectations, Provides New 2008 Forecast… Merrill Lynch Reports Record Loss… Asian stocks up… European stocks down… Dollar moving lower against the Euro, yen… And the futures are flat in the hour before the bell.
Late selling helped erase was was a strong mid-day rally in the markets yesterday.
Housing starts, jobless claims and the Philly Fed all have the potential to provide cover for whatever mood it is that traders find themselves in this morning. Recession and bear market talk is almost taken for granted, and has even entered the vocabulary of the political pundit class. It is enough to make a trader wonder whether or not the World’s Most Anticipated Recession will actually happen, after all. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is also scheduled to speak today. It will be worth noting whether or not his comments on the economy will echo the more benign econmic analysis of the Beige Book, or the more accommodative sentiments expressed, among other areas, in the Fed funds futures market, which has bid up the probability of a 50% rate cut in January.
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TradingMarkets 5 Business Stories You Need to Know |
Wells Fargo’s Lowest Quarterly Profit in Years – Associated Press
Quarterly earnings were down 38%, but investors bid shares higher in hopes that absence of new warnings suggested that the worst of the mortgage-related losses were over. Based on our PowerRatings, Wells Fargo is an average stock in an industry–Money Center Banks–with several other options that are more likely than Wells Fargo to be higher one year from now.
JP Morgan’s Profits Plunge – CNN Money
Net profits for JP Morgan were down 34% for the quarter due in large part to $1.3 bn in subprime-related losses. JP Morgan is also a member of the Money Center Bank industry, an industry group with a top PowerRating. Find out what stocks in the group are even better bets than JP Morgan for investors looking for stocks that will be higher in a year’s time.
Oracle Buys BEA Systems – Marketwatch
Pursuit–and a 27% premium–pays off as Oracle announces its acquisition of software maker. Oracle’s PowerRating reveals it to be an average stock in an average industry, Application Software. So it is little surprise that there are at least five stocks in the group that have a better than of being higher in a year than does Oracle.
Find out what those stocks are at PowerRatings.net.
Fed’s Beige Book – Marketwatch
Fed viewed economic growth in late 2007 as “moderate”, and provided a generally more posititve tone on the economy that previous reports.
Says job markets remain tight even though unemployment spiked to 5% in December.
Airlines Forage for a Merger – New York Times
What stands in the way of struggling airline companies taking care of their own business through mergers and acquisitions? Dealbook’s Deal Professor Steven M. Davidoff counts the ways. Although an industry with an average PowerRating, the Major Airlines group is riddled with low PowerRatings stocks. By contrast, the Regional Airlines group has a very high PowerRating and more than a few stocks that stand a better chance that the average stock–to say nothing of the average airlines stock–of being higher one year from 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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Kinder Morgan Partners
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PowerRating) beat earnings on Wednesday afternoon, reporting $0.50 EPS over an expected $0.45 EPS. -
Blockbuster
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PowerRating) rallied 22%, after JP Morgan said that Apple competition worries could be overblown. -
BB&T Corporation
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PowerRating) reported net income gains of more than 13% for 2007 and $0.75 EPS. -
Continental Airlines
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PowerRating) announces quarterly results on Thursday morning; watch for $0.03 EPS. -
International Game Technology
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PowerRating) posted earnings that were in-line with analyst estimates at $0.36 per share on declining net income. - Merrill Lynch
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PowerRating) posted a sharp fourth quarter loss of $12.01 per share, dramatically less than analyst expectations. - Novartis
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PowerRating) missed earnings estimates on Thursday morning.
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 |
| Canadian Solar | CSIQ | 10 |
| AgnicoEagle Mines | AEM | 9 |
| SunPower | SPWR | 8 |
| MEMC Electronic Materials | WFR | 8 |
| TradeStation Group | TRAD | 8 |
| View More Stocks |
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TradingMarkets Tracking the Wizards |
Mike Bloomberg Picks a Hedge Fund – New York Times
The billionaire mayor of New York City picks an old friend, Steve Rattner, and his investment firm the Quadrangle Group to manage his billions. Rattner is a former deputy chairman and deputy chairman at Lazard, where he founded the firm’s Media and Communications Group.
Hedge Fund Investors Indifferent to Credit Crisis – MSNBC
If the increase in in-flows to hedge funds in late 2007 was any indication, then “qualified investors” are weathering the credit storm well. According to Hedge Fund Research, twice as much money flowed to hedge funds in the final months of 2007 than they did in 2006 during the Amaranth natural gas trading fiasco.
Ackman Adds to Target, Borders Stakes – FINalternatives
Ackman’s Pershing Square Asset Management increases holdings in major retailer and bookseller by modest margins. Both Target and Borders have PowerRatings that are on the low end of the average range, meaning that the stocks are as likely as the average stock to be higher one year from now. Visit PowerRatings.net to see if you can find better options for investment from among their peers.
View Portfolios of Prominent Investors
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TradingMarkets Playbook |
The question remains the same as the market continues to dart higher and lower. The Wednesday lows in the S&P 500, Dow Industrials and Nasdaq are a critical level if the market is to bottom here. The question is whether or not those who were clever enough to get long early yesterday will remain committed to the long side–or be joined by others unmoved by markets moving lower on what is essentially the same news.
Yesterday’s trading left the markets mildly oversold–especially in the near-term. This suggests that the bounce that began early yesterday stands a good chance of continuing today. A number of quality stocks–from Apple to Research in Motion–have earned particularly high PowerRatings as of yesterday’s close, which suggests that there are a many good opportunities to buy weakness in otherwise strong stocks. Nevertheless, the markets remain below their 200-day moving averages, which means the guidelines laid out in Larry Connors’
“Five Mistakes to Avoid in a Market Trading Below its 200-day Moving Average”–available for free at TradingMarkets.com–are still very much in effect.
David Penn is Senior Editor at TradingMarkets.com.
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