Icahn comments spark late day sell off
Index & Sector performance 11/18/13
The Market:
It was a fairly quiet day in the markets until a comment from Carl Icahn appears to have started a late day sell off after noting that he could see the markets have a “big drop”. This sent the S&P 500 down roughly 12 points in the final hour of trading
In economic date the NAHB Housing Market Index fell slightly short of estimates posting a 54 when 56 was expected. Today also some a mix of Fed speak and that continues tomorrow including Fed Chairman Bernanke at 7pm EST and President Obama at 3pm EST. Otherwise there is not much economic data until Wednesday when we get CPI, Retail Sales, Existing Home Sales and the Fed minutes.
Story Stocks:
Boeing (BA) helped the Dow today closing up X% after unveiling the new 777X which the company claims is the largest and most efficient twin engine jet in the world.
Sony (SNE) has rebounded nicely of late after disappointing earnings sent the stock lower. SNE gaped higher in early trading today after the company tweeted they sold over 1 million PlayStation 4’s crushing analyst expectations for the launch. Right on their heels is Microsoft (MSFT) which starts selling the Xbox One this Friday 11/22/13.
Moving higher after beating EPS estimates today were JinkoSolar (JKS) and Tyson Foods (TSN) gaining X% and X% respectively. In addition to beating EPS, TSN raised the dividend to 7.5c/share.
The following noteworthy companies are scheduled to report earnings before tomorrow’s open: HD, MDT, TJX, BBY, CPB, DKS, VAL
Analyst Comments:
Upgrades 11/18/13
Downgrades 11/18/13
Initiations 11/18/13
Price Target Changes 11/18/13
The Game Plan:
While the velocity of today’s late day drop was troubling. It did not leave any serious technical damage to the uptrend. If you’re interested, today was the first trading day after the most recent full moon on 11/17/13. I have noted past full moons with the black dotted lines.
What will be even more interesting to watch is if this set-up of price pressing outside the Bollinger Bands going into the full moon acts as a turning point like it has in the past. It is worth noting that the mid September occurrence did not produce a meaningful pullback. It is also worth noting at that time the MACD had just broken its long downtrend line with the RSI below oversold. In contract we now have negative divergence on the MACD and while the RSI is not overbought, it also has negative divergence.
