Daily Wrap

DJIA +180.85 (+1.21%) to 15,176.08; S&P 500 +23.84 (+1.48%) to 1,636.36; NASDAQ +36.76 (+1.26%) to 2,962.90

An second retest of the 50 day Moving Average proved to be a spring board sending the S&P 500 screaming higher on the day and of the major indices only second to the Russell 2000.  Helping today’s cause was two positive data point in economic news.  First the retail sales rose 0.6% when consensus expectations were 0.4% and then initial Unemployment claims came in at 334K when I had 354K as the estimate or a 20K beat.  What I am watching now is the 20 day SMA which comes in at roughly 1636, above the market, and will it now act as resistance or can we push through?

We had an IPO of a cosmetics name, Coty (COTY), which recently pushed itself into the news when it tried to purchase much larger Avon Products (AVP).  Unfortunately for COTY, the IPO was not met with much initial fan fare and closed below the initial auction price of $17.50.

In merger news, Belo (BLC) gained over 28% today on news that they agreed to be purchased by Gannett (GCI) for $13.75 per share in cash.  Interestingly enough GCI gained even more closing up over 34% as they noted they see the merger adding roughly 50c in non-GAAP earnings in the first 12 months.  Some pin action off the news included TV (TVL) and Sinclair Broadcast (SBGI) which closed up 20.09% and 12.7% respectively.

Shares of Elan (ELN) closed down today but executive’s were likely happy as it was due to Royalty Pharma stating a shareholder proposal which looked likely to pass might force them to rescind their offer.

The following noteworthy companies are scheduled to report earnings before tomorrow’s open: SFD, NGL

In analyst notes today, BlackBerry (BBRY) was upgraded to Buy Societe Generale with a $17 price target.  Celgene (CELG) and  Gilead (GILD) were upgraded to Buy at Argus with $140 and $62 price targets respectively.  On the downside I happen to see Keybanc get negative on some REITs.  That seems a little late in the game but maybe they will be right longer term but right here I don’t know.  One in particular is a name I was looking at as a potential snap back trade long candidate Ventas (VTR) which they lowered to Underweight.  Some of these and other upgrades and downgrades for the day can be found each morning when I post my 9 @ 9 in the Upgrades/Downgrades section.