Bulls Battle Bears

Well its been a hectic weekend for myself, not just in regards to the Superbowl, but also in the midst of getting settled into temporary living settings as I am in a accelerated medical review session for the month of February. This is going to make the ability to trade extremely hard, but will try my best to provide details needed to move forward with the news and information that will be essential.

I will have to make one change, in terms of news, I will only be able to post news around 6am EST which I recommend you check before making trades. I will comb through the essentials that are needed to read and look for sectors and plays for either a short interest, or a traditional long play. I hope this does not disappoint too many people and do apologize.

Also, the emails subscriptions are sent in the night, but with news summaries more important, they should arrive in your mailbox no later than 8am of the day they are to be utilized.

Okay back to business for today.

The markets were down for the whole day and the start did not look as good as it ended. According to Monday futures, it was expected that the markets would crash.

A stock that I talk about a lot lately, (BAC) was a total dud. They clowns that run the bank decided to buy a expensive Superbowl ad at the expense of bailout money. Is this the example a company should have days before begging for another hand? The reaction on the market spoke for itself and shares were dropped from the open and the sell off of Bank of American continued. Link.

With all the talk of a recession, many investors today just picked meat from technology stocks while pushing industrial stocks lower. There was no real reason for this mixed direction except for the opportunity for short term gains on price swings.

Here is the summary video for today:

All the major news was covered in the above summary.

However, for tomorrow, there is a chance, or hope, by some that are looking for another jump in the financial stocks. Again, it would only be on short term hype and nothing else. Its a good play to watch if a rally does develop. But I would not hold this stock more than a few hours in the current state of uncertain bank bailouts. (WFC), (BAC) would be the three that I paid close attention to in any financial play. All show major swing patterns and could have the potential of the largest rise in price if any true bailout does happen. (C) is one stock that might be better of as a short to zero. A few analyst reports that I read predict that this bailout will drag Citigroup as the “bad bank” and in essence would wipe out common shares.

If the latter is a true prediction, this will be chaos on the markets. Play all those stocks carefully.

(GE), which was up last week after poor earnings was down today to its lowest price since 1996. I did say last week that there is a push to drive this stock into the $9 range. We are getting closer and if this does happen, I will have to get into the stock as a play. (GE) does not in my eyes look like a company that can fail like the banks but the stock price might take a beating for a little while before its next rebound.

My current holding of (MO) was up today on news of another ciggerette tax hike that passed in Washington D.C. today. This stock has many predicting $21 range (I did say this last week). With the tax hike official of $0.60 cents, there can no be a sustained rally as most smokers will be be discouraged by the tax hike to get their “fix”.

(CAT) which cut many jobs last week and is down in price considerably might see a rally forming once Obama’s infrastructure bill comes into light. With construction increased, the demand for machinery will rise which means more revenue for (CAT).

(COP) also has been given a buy rating by Jim Cramer. He said on CNBC that this company is not going to sit below $50/share for too long and I’m currently looking at the stock myself for a long position. It does have upside potential but with the current lop-sided markets that drag innocent stock prices down, this could see a little more downside. Its all about how much risk I want to invest in this company now. If anything, I might invest 50% of my budget into this stock now, and leave the other half to cover and average down that I might have to do or just ride a smaller profit upwards.

Well these are the summaries for Monday. I will write Tuesday morning at 6am before I head out. All my plays for the next little while will have to be either during lunch or limit order plays. Its going to be hard, but not impossible to play the market.

Happy Investing!

Aman, MBA