Stocks Hit Highs, Dollar Drops, Bernanke Warns

  • November 16, 2009
  • David Goodboy

Stocks hit a 13-month high today as surprisingly positive retail sales figures helped to power the gains. Conversely, the U.S. dollar hit a 15 month low as Fed Chief, Ben Bernanke, warned of significant headwinds to the recovery, in a speech to the Economic Club of New York. Oil soared leading the energy sector higher wrapping up the very bullish session. The DJIA surged +136.49 to 10406.96, the tech heavy Nasdaq jumped higher by +29.97 to 2197.85 and the broad based S&P 500 advanced +15.82 to 1109.30.

Sprint Nextel
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PowerRating): Soared 12.90% or 40 cents to $3.50/share after being upgraded to “outperform” at Credit Suisse upon paying off one billion in debt.

US Steel
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PowerRating): Advanced 4.76% or $1.88 to $41.37/share upon JP Morgan adding the company to its focus list.

Citigroup
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PowerRating): Climbed 3.21% or 13 cents to $4.18/share after it was made public that Paulson & Co bought a piece of the company.

American Dairy
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PowerRating): Fell steeply 20.97% or $6.80 to $25.63/share after revealing its sales will not meet estimates this year.

Oil added $2.55 to $78.87, gold surged $22.70 to $1138.20 and the VIX fear index dropped 2.01% to 22.89.

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Market Snapshot

Dow

 +136.49 10406.96

NASDAQ

 +29.97 2197.85

S&P 500

 +15.82 1109.30

Economic
News

Retail Sales (Oct): Consensus: 0.9%, Prior: -1.5%, Revise From: -1.5%

Retail Sales ex-auto (Oct): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: 0.4%, Revise From: 0.5%

Empire Manufacturing (Nov): Consensus: 30.00, Prior: 34.57

Business Inventories (Sep): Consensus: -0.7%, Prior: -1.6%, Revise From: -1.5%

Core PPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.1%, Prior: -0.1%

PPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.5%, Prior: -0.6%

Net Long-Term TIC Flows (Sep): Consensus: $35.0B, Prior: $28.6B

Capacity Utilization (Oct): Consensus: 70.8%, Prior: 70.5%

Industrial Production (Oct): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: 0.7%

Housing Starts (Oct): Consensus: 600K, Prior: 590K

Building Permits (Oct): Consensus: 580K, Prior: 573K

CPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.2%, Prior: 0.2%

Core CPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.1%, Prior: 0.2%

Crude Inventories (11/13): Consensus: NA, Prior: 1.76M

Initial Claims (11/14): Consensus: 504K, Prior: 502K

Continuing Claims (11/13): Consensus: 5600K, Prior: 5631K

Leading Indicators (Oct): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: 1.0%

Philadelphia Fed (Nov): Consensus: 12.0, Prior: 11.5