Nightly Recap 3-24-2010
Market Summary:
DOW -52.68 (10,836.15)
S&P -6.45 (1,167.72)
Nasdaq -16.48 (2,398.76)
Nightly News Links
US Economy:
Durable Goods Jump on Continued Strength in Aircraft (Econompic)
Orders for big-ticket manufactured goods rose for a third consecutive month in February, bolstered by strong demand for commercial aircraft and machinery. The
hope is that continued strength in manufacturing will help sustain the economic recovery.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for durable goods advanced 0.5 percent last month, slightly lower than the 0.7 percent gain that economists had expected.
Chicago Fed National Activity Index (Chicago Fed) [PDF]
Chicago Fed National Activity Index is a surprisingly good forecaster of economic activity. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) is a monthly index constructed to summarize variation in 85 data series on U.S. economic activity.
New Home Sales Plunge To New All Time Record Low (Zero Hedge)
New home sales drop to a record low adjusted annual rate of 308K. All of the government's housing stabilizing measures are now a disaster, as existing home sales inventory surges to nearly 9 months, not counting the shadow inventory, which is more than double.
World Economy:
China: Sale of residential land temporarily halted (China Daily)
The Ministry of Land and Resources has ordered a temporary ban on the sale of land for housing in a renewed measure to ease soaring real estate prices.
Yun Xiaosu, vice-minister of land and resources, said local authorities should not sell land for residential purposes until this year's housing land supply plan is released in early April.
"Residential land supply will increase and low-income housing projects will top local governments' agendas," Yun said during a video-conference on Monday.
Getting Technical: Trouble Brewing in Europe (Barrons)
News that Portugal's credit rating was downgraded by one of the major ratings agencies sent a shiver across the European Union.
The question on investors' minds is whether this is the start of something bigger or just a contained incident. After all, Greece's problems did not take down global markets.The stock market, however, might have the answer and it is not good. Technical death crosses -- when key short-term moving averages move below longer-term moving averages -- have occurred in several of the troubled markets. Most will agree that the stock market looks forward to events expected to occur perhaps nine months down the road. It is one way we can explain why stocks rallied a year ago when the financial world was in danger of collapse. "We ain't seen nuthin' yet"
Have a Good Night
-K
Two picks: AIB and AMD
This is my first blog post here. As a friendly note, I assume no responsibility or liability for your trading and investment results. Do not forget, this website is solely for entertainment purpose only.
Today the trading day started with generally high buying demand and ended the same. My two picks for today are: AIB and AMD.
| Company | Buy Date | Sell Date | Buy Price | Sell Price | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD | 5/18/09 | - | $4.1399 | - | - |
| AIB | 5/18/09 | - | $2.89 | - | - |
All indicators aside, I think AIB is one of the financials that is undervalued. According to Zacks.com, in its first quarter trading update, AIB "announced that operating profits before bad debt provisions were higher than the year-ago quarter, reflecting strong performance of its Capital Markets and Global Treasury divisions." That not to say that they do not have problems- they still experience declines in operating profits, net interest margins shrink, etc. The point is not many institutions are problem-less. As of the close today, the stock is at $2.90 so it is still a penny stock. Most likely it will be a longer term play for me.
AMD is a pure technical play. It has a major support somewhere between $4.07 and $4.12 (as indicated on the graph below). I bought it at $4.1399 hoping that it will break its trend of fluctuating and find its way up. It did surge, but not as high as I was expecting. The bears and bulls are still fighting. Depending on pre-market, I will most likely sell this stock in order to break even (including commissions).
The Dow Jones Industrial Index has not yet bottomed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average doesn't appear to have bottomed out as of today.
The news that are coming are still not good and the technical chart all points to even lower market soon.
