The Stock market turns around
February 25, 2008
After a mixed week, Wall Street performed a dramatic turnaround in the last half-hour of trading following the spread of a rumor that a bailout plan for the troubled bond insurer Ambac Financial could be announced next week. CNBC announced that in general bankers working on the deal have made significant progress in shoring up the company's finances, which led experts to believe that there is probably some validity to these rumors, and that it could bring new confidence to the financial sector and to the stock market as a whole.
Retail sales rose slightly last week (see below- WalMart) giving some hope for stability although this certainly does not mean that economy started its upward move. The upward trend will be fueled by a possible increase of exports from the US and a decrease in imports, both leading to narrowing of the trade gap; and these may be good news.
Discover Financial Services was the largest financial gainer on Friday, as its stock surged nearly 9% after the credit card company got a rating boost from its former parent company, Morgan Stanley. A Morgan Stanley analyst, Ken Posner reversed his rating for Discover to a buy due to increasingly optimistic view about Discover's outlook. He expects the company to beat the average analyst earnings estimate this year, "thanks to more prudent underwriting, more leverage in the net interest margin to Fed rate cuts, and limited vulnerability to gapping spreads in the unsecured funding markets”.
Among other top stories of last week, Wal-Mart (WMT), the world's largest retailer posted a rise in fiscal fourth-quarter net income, and expects an even more profitable year in 2008. The world's largest retailer said on Tuesday that aggressive holiday discounts and improvements in its more than 4,000 U.S. stores boosted sales despite consumer worries. "No one has a crystal ball to look into the economic future, but we know the economy will be a critical factor this year," said Chief Executive Lee Scott.
Another giant, Microsoft (MSFT), decided to take an aggressive approach in its quest to acquire Yahoo! (YHOO), and will launch a fight for control of Yahoo!'s board this week. Microsoft, which made a bid of $31 a share for Yahoo! on Feb. 1, will nominate a slate of directors to Yahoo!'s board. Running a proxy battle is viewed as a far less costly way to buy the Internet company than raising its initial bid of $44.6 billion, which Yahoo! rejected. The value of that half-cash/half-stock bid has fallen since Microsoft's share price dropped 13% to close at $28.31 on Friday. Yahoo! is still insisting on its buy price of $40 a share.
One of the most popular stocks in
Yalicoo’s competitions is the manufacturer and marketer of wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market, Research In Motion (RIMM). The company raised its fourth-quarter subscriber growth forecast on Thursday to reflect strong holiday sales of its popular BlackBerry smartphones, sending its shares to new heights. RIMM is now forecasting that net subscriber additions in the quarter will be 15 to 20 percent higher than the 1.82 million it forecasted in December. If the company’s management is accurately forecasting the future, RIMM could be a very valuable purchase for the next few months.
Don't forget to play for FREE on Thursday!
We continue to run a FREE daily game on Thursdays, and would like to invite you to join the celebration and compete for FREE.
This special daily competition will take place on Thursday, February 28, 2008. The competition rules and prizes are the same as any other daily competition, but there is no entrance fee; you are welcome to join for FREE!
This is going to be an exciting and challenging competition as many of our all-time expert traders have already registered to the game, and we expect many others to join in the coming days. Don’t miss your chance to participate in this unique event, learn from great investors and win cash prizes for creating the best performing portfolio.
Here is the direct link to
JOIN the FREE Thursday Competition!
Yalicoo competitions summary
The
monthly competition has reached its final week; at this point
iverson is safely leading with 11.40%. what (5.42%) and yhjia (5.23%) are still in second and third places, but the spread between them to other players is very small. In a volatile market, such as the one we have seen recently, gaining or losing few percentages for your portfolio in several days is quite probable; thus, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see new names on the final score board at the end of the week.
The situation in the
quarterly competition is totally different, where all the players are far behind
TheTrader (20.95%), BULLitPROFF (16.39%) and agent (15.17%). These three traders have kept their lead for the last few weeks and continue increasing the gap between them and the other players. Regardless, we have many excellent traders registered to this game who can gradually decrease the gap and get closer to the leading three.
As we all know, the stock market could be like a rollercoaster; thus, the game is not over until the final day of the quarter.
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