Saturday, August 15, 2009

STOCK MARKET RECAP

By David Goodboy

Bad Banks Back, Stocks Slump, Dollar Grows

Word that over 150 publicly traded banks may have more than five percent of bad loans rocked the stock market lower today. Five percent is considered the limit for an institution to remain solvent. Stocks have soared higher over the last 4 weeks hence some of today's decline can be attributed to nervous investors taking profits before the weekend. The U.S. Dollar was a beneficiary of the negative equity sentiment growing nicely against the Euro during New York trade. Despite the hard core pessimism, stocks managed to bounce near the close, ending the session well off the lows. The DJIA ended the day down -76.79 to 9321.40, the Nasdaq gave up -23.83 to 1985.52 and the broad based S&P 500 dropped -8.64 to 1004.09.

Barnes & Noble (BKS | Chart | News | PowerRating) - Suffered a downgrade to underperform at Credit Suisse, sending shares lower by 9.18% or $2.11 to $20.67.

Coinstar (CSTR | Chart | News | PowerRating) - The coin counting and DVD kiosk concern dropped 10.17% to $3.59 to $31.70/share after word that a major studio will refuse to provide first run movies to kiosk type operations.

Nordstrom (JWN | Chart | News | PowerRating) - Second quarter profits dropped a dramatic 27% sending shares lower by 6.35% or $1.89 to $27.87.

Volkswagen (VLKAY | Chart | News | PowerRating) - Deciding to buy a large stake in Porsche, the German automaker fell 15.37% or $10.00 to $55.05.

Oil dropped $3.01 to $67.65, gold gave back $7.80 to $948.70 and surprisingly the fear index VIX gave back 1.78% to 24.27 after being much higher intraday.

Market Snapshot

Dow

-76.79 9321.40

NASDAQ

-23.83 1985.52

S&P 500

-8.64 1004.09
Economic News

Productivity-Prel (Q2): Consensus: 5.4%, Prior: 1.6%

Unit Labor Costs (Q2): Consensus: -2.4%, Prior: 3.0%

Wholesale Inventories (Jun): Consensus: -0.9%, Prior: -0.8%

Trade Balance (Jun): Consensus: -$28.5B, Prior: $26.0B

Crude Inventories (08/07): Consensus: NA, Prior: +1.67M

Treasury Budget (Jul): Consensus: -$180.0B, Prior: NA

FOMC Rate Decision: Consensus: NA, Prior: 0.00%-0.25%

Export Prices ex-ag. (Jul): Consensus: NA, Prior: 0.8%

Import Prices ex-oil (Jul): Consensus: NA, Prior: 0.2%

Initial Claims (08/08): Consensus: 545K, Prior: 550K

Retain Sales (Jul): Consensus: 0.7%, Prior: 0.6%

Retail Sales ex-auto (Jul): Consensus: 0.1%, Prior: 0.3%

Business Inventories (Jun): Consensus: -0.9%, Prior: -1.0%

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

CPI (Jul): Consensus: 0.0%, Prior: 0.7%

Capacity Utilization (Jul): Consensus: 68.4%, Prior: 68.0%

Industrial Production (Jul): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: -0.4%

Mich Sentiment-Prel (Aug): Consensus: 69.0, Prior: 66.0

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