March 28, 2024

Daily Wrap

DJIA -206.04 (-1.35%) to 15,112.19;S&P 500 -22.88 (-1.39%) to 1,628.93;NASDAQ -36.59 (-1.22%) to 2,959.50

You are likely living under a rock if you were not aware that today was rate decision and FOMC minute day.  It was not about the rate decision itself as no one I heard was anticipating a move but it was all about the minutes and specifically the discussion of when the stimulus would end or the key word of recent times “tapered”.  The decision and comments sent the markets tumbling and closed down over 22 points in the S&P and 200 on the Dow.  In the grand scheme the move is not much considering the recent rally but what I will be watching is we have twice successfully tested and held the 50 day SMA, can it do it a third time?  If not then the S&P 500 should look to target $1600 and/or $1550.  In economic news tomorrow we will have the Thursday Unemployment claims number.  I show current estimated at 343K and last report produced a better than expected 334K.

With such a strong down day, it might not be surprising to see a down stock in my news but this one would have been down on an up day as well.  Sprint (S) lost over 4% after Dish Network (DISH) stated it would not submit another takeover offer which leaves Softbank of Japan as the top offer at $21.6 billion.  Instead of pursuing S, DISH announced they will raise their offer for Clearwire (CLRW) of which S owns 51% to $4.40.  The previous top bid was S at $3.40 so this was a substantial jump but the market had this one right and CLWR was already trading over $4.50 coming into today.

The following noteworthy companies are scheduled to report earnings before tomorrow’s open: KR, RAD, PIR, MEI

In analyst notes today, Adobe (ADBE) was upgraded to Buy at BofA/Merrill with $57 price target.  Siemens (SI) was upgraded to Buy at Nomura and Toll Brothers (TOL) was upgraded to Buy at Argus with a $42 price target.  On the downside, American Eagle (AEO) was downgraded to Neutral Citigroup with $21 price target.  KLA-Tencor (KLAC) was downgraded to Hold Stifel and BlackBerry (BBRY) was downgraded to Underperform at Bernstein with $10 price target.  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.

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