Wednesday Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets

  • February 27, 2008
  • David Penn

Good Morning!

Bernanke Testified Before Congress This Morning… Euro Hits Record High Against U.S. Dollar… Case-Shiller Index of Home Prices Plunges… New York Philharmonic Performs in North Korea… Google Ads Attracting Fewer Consumer Clicks… Dreamworks Up On Shrek 3 Sales… Crude Oil Nears New Record High… Microsoft Hit with Record Antitrust Fine by European Union… New Homes Sales Data Due Today.

Asian stocks up… European stocks down… Greenbacks are moving lower against the Euro, Japanese yen… And the futures are trending lower in the hour before the bell.

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TradingMarkets 5 Business Stories You Need to Know

Halliburton Profits Up – TheStreet.com

Halliburton reported fourth quarter earnings gains of approximately 5% due to strong revenue growth from overseas. Revenues were up 19% from the year before.

Cramer Hearts Verizon – TheStreet.com

Long a fan of Verizon’s FIOS network, and a believer that FIOS will ultimately replace cable as the way consumers access the Internet and a host of other resources and services, TheStreet.com’s Jim Cramer comes out big for Verizon on the eve of the company’s quarterly earnings report.

Euro Reaches 1.50 Versus Greenback – Thomson Financial

Renewed fears of recession in the United States–and the likely policies to respond to such a recession–lead to a record-breaking high for the Euro against the U.S. Dollar.

Fannie Mae Loss Worse Than Expected – Reuters

Fourth quarter losses at Fannie Mae were more than three times worse than expected as the subprime mortgage fallout and continued weak housing market takes its toll of the government-backed lender.

Google’s Clicks Clunking? – Wall Street Journal

Do fewer clicks on Google ads mean that the economic slowdown has reached the world of Internet advertising? A 7% drop in clicks on Google ads in January helped send shares of the stock lower on Tuesday.

For more stories as they happen, go to our Breaking News section.

TradingMarkets 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Today

Here are 7 stocks for traders for today from TradingMarkets.com:

For a list of today’s highest PowerRating stocks, click here.

TradingMarkets 5 Top PowerRatings Stocks for Today

Company
 Symbol PowerRatings
Ultralife Batteries UBLI 9
Dycom Industries DY 8
Fannie Mae FNM 8
UltraShort Financials ProShares SKF 8
Yahoo! YHOO 8

» View More Stocks

TradingMarkets Tracking the Wizards

Is Black-Scholes Wrong on Risk? – Portfolio.com

More and more investors–from stock investors to mortgage borrowers–are relying on an understanding of risk based on the Black-Scholes model of perpetually using short positions of offset long ones. No matter if the “sweet logic” of that model has failed investors over and over again.

Hedge Fund Spy vs. Spy – New York Times

Elliott Mangement filed suit against Cedar Hill Capital Partners, accusing the rival hedge fund of engaging in corporate espionage through an attempt to steal Elliott Management’s proprietary trading software. The lawsuit refers to a “secret conspiracy” involving a relationship with an Elliott Management employee and consultant it says acted as “double agents.”

Market Testing Wizards to the Rescue! – TradingMarkets

Got a trading plan? If so, are you serious enough about your success to have your trading strategy backtested by a team of market professionals? Click here for your free report on the “10 Steps to Successful Backtesting,” from Market Testing Wizards. Whether or not you are new to backtesting or an old hand at analyzing parameters and optimizing performance, Market Testing Wizards will let you know if your trading plan is truly a winning one.

View Portfolios of Prominent Investors

TradingMarkets Playbook

Both the S&P 500 and Dow Industrials are up three days in a row, nearing their February highs. Unsurprisingly, both are also as overbought as they have been all month based on their 2-period RSIs.

We are also seeing a resumption in the extreme ratio of low PowerRatings stocks compared to high PowerRatings stocks. This means that the market continues to be vulnerable to correction and that weak stocks that are bouncing into potential resistance should be high among trader targets for the time being.

The markes are poised for a lower open based on the futures. Given the wealth of economic news–from Bernanke’t testimony this morning to home sales news, it should not surprise traders if the markets took this opportunity to produce a well-deserved pullback

David Penn is Senior Editor at TradingMarkets.com.

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