Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Earnings Ahead
As we head into the earnings season the selling continued Monday. The Dow lost 125.21 points to close at 8,473.97. The SPX fell 20.09 points to finish the session at 870.26. We are in the green and looking good.
Alcoa (AA) is the company that traditionally kicks off earnings season with AA reporting after the bell. Ahead of this report, the major market indices saw declines on concerns about falling profits. Normally, when expectations are so low, it can result in gains on the actual announcement, so we will just have to see how earnings fare compared with estimates. As for as AA, the aluminum maker saw its shares fall 6.94 percent in the regular session. After the bell, the company reported earnings that missed estimates by 18-cents, but the stock is trading near the flat line near $10.
Commodity prices continued to fall Monday with crude falling for the fifth straight session. Oil prices were down $3.24 a barrel to $37.59, which is a two-week low. Concerns about demand have put downward pressure on commodities. Last week, we found out that nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost during 2008 and this is likely to result in even weaker demand.
Finally it looks like that the markets did not hold their trend line support or their 50-day moving average. It will be interesting to see how stocks fare on earnings announcements given the outlook is so gloomy.
Until next time.
Alcoa (AA) is the company that traditionally kicks off earnings season with AA reporting after the bell. Ahead of this report, the major market indices saw declines on concerns about falling profits. Normally, when expectations are so low, it can result in gains on the actual announcement, so we will just have to see how earnings fare compared with estimates. As for as AA, the aluminum maker saw its shares fall 6.94 percent in the regular session. After the bell, the company reported earnings that missed estimates by 18-cents, but the stock is trading near the flat line near $10.
Commodity prices continued to fall Monday with crude falling for the fifth straight session. Oil prices were down $3.24 a barrel to $37.59, which is a two-week low. Concerns about demand have put downward pressure on commodities. Last week, we found out that nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost during 2008 and this is likely to result in even weaker demand.
Finally it looks like that the markets did not hold their trend line support or their 50-day moving average. It will be interesting to see how stocks fare on earnings announcements given the outlook is so gloomy.
Until next time.
# posted by Paul @ 4:56 AM 
