Posts for Ticker ‘DIA’

Is Buffett Becoming A Lagging Indicator? (BRK-A)

BuffettImage gates foundationWarren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) was out yesterday talking up “enormous progress” that has been made since a year ago.  His comments came from an interview and an opening address at the 4th annual closed-door Lydian Roundtable on the Payments Industry, a gathering of senior executives in the payments space.  Buffett noted the resiliency of the American system, yet he also cautioned that we are not 100% there just yet when it comes to a return of consumer confidence and spending.  Where this gets interesting is that Buffett has been far more timid in 2009 and it is getting hard to not wonder if Buffett is starting to become a lagging economic indicator.  His Berkshire Hathaway stock may or may not confirm this notion, but it has underperformed the market since at least the market recovery began.
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Posted on: October 21, 2009 – 10:18 am in Buffett, ETF, Economy, Value Investing, , ,

IBM Is The Key to DJIA 10,000 (JPM, INTC, IBM, DIA)

Bull and Bear ImageThe Dow Jones Industrial Average is literally within 20 points of the psychological DJIA 10,000 mark.  We have not seen Dow-10K since October, 2008, but that month we saw 11,000 and saw under 8,000 all in the same month.  JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), up over 3%, and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), up over 2%, both DJIA components, are the two culprits that have us up to within 20 points now that the market is up over 100 points in early afternoon trading.  At 1:00 we had only 7 of the DJIA components in negative territory, and these are all down only by a few cents each.

But the biggest DJIA component is International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and it reports earnings tomorrow after the close.  As the DJIA is a price-weighted index, IBM is now the largest DJIA component with its $127+ price tag.  Its weighting in the index is over 9% as a result.  After Intel, it seems that you would expect a solid report.  Its services order backlog reported at the end of last quarter was a whopping $132 billion.  And many feel the bar is set low here for most large companies now this quarter.

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Posted on: October 14, 2009 – 1:17 pm in Entertainment, Index, Technology Companies, , , ,

The Path to DJIA 10,000 (C, AIG, JNJ, JPM, IBM, NWS, DIA)

Bull and Bear ImageThe Dow Jones Industrial Average is within sight of the psychological 10,000 mark.  Again. This is a price-weighted index rather than a market cap-weighted index, which makes the index not as representative of the overall market.  Yet when Joe Public asks “what did the market do today?” that almost always means what the Dow Jones Industrial Average did.  And today the DJIA came within 1% of hitting the DJIA 10,000 mark.  This level is a psychological event and not a key technical event, and its member constituency earnings this week could easily make that 10,000 mark come true.  What is funny (or sad) is that if the most recent changes to the index weren’t made, we would have already seen the DJIA hit the mark.
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Posted on: October 12, 2009 – 12:59 pm in ETF, Editor's Picks, Index, , , , , , ,

The DJIA 10,000 Psyche (AIG, C, DIA, SPY, GLD)

Bull and Bear ImageWhile everyone is stuck talking about the one year anniversary of the Lehman implosion and the real start of the next-to-last big leg down in the financial sector, there is a significant development taking place that is more psychological than anything.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average is within 300 points of the 10,000 mark.  What is interesting, depending upon how you would calculate the stocks now after a reverse split, is that had American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) and Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) been left in the DJIA we would already be right at the 10,000 mark.  Changing index components can bite both ways.

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Posted on: September 16, 2009 – 11:19 am in ETF, Index, , , , ,

Significant Moving Average Tests For DJIA and S&P 500 (DIA, SPY, SDS)

Money Stack ImageWe won’t go as far as to say that the DJIA and the S&P 500 are directly correlated even after the recent rebalance.  However, there is one common notion on today’s weakness that has brought up yet another serious chart alert.  Both the DJIA and S&P 500 are down and the alerts came up regarding the 50-day and 200-day moving averages.  This is being confirmed in both key market ETF’s in the charts of the DIAMONDS Trust (NYSE: DIA) and the SPDRs (NYSE: SPY).
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Posted on: June 22, 2009 – 11:59 am in Charts, ETF, Index, Technical Analysis, Trading Alert, , ,

Will 50-Day Moving Averages Hold Up This Time? (DIA, SPY, QQQQ)

Yesterday’s major rally may have brought on more than just the garden variety panic buying seen in prior panic buying waves.  So far we have profit taking being seen early on, but the DJIA and the S&P 500 crossed above their respective 50-Day Moving Averages in yesterday’s move.  This is more easy for traders to track in the major ETF’s, so we ran these for the DIAMONDS Trust (NYSE: DIA), SPDRs (NYSE: SPY), and the PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ: QQQQ).
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Posted on: March 24, 2009 – 8:00 am in ETF, Index, Technical Analysis, Trading Alert, , ,

DJIA: Don’t Reshuffle Index, Just Cease The Index (GE, MMM, AA, GM, C, BAC, AIG, HON, DIA, SPY)

burning-money-pic10The Dow Jones industrial average, or DJIA, is perhaps the mostly widely recognized index in the world.  When people talk about “The Market” in cabs and in bars, and on the phone, they do not really mean the advance/decline line.  They do not mean the S&P 500.  They don’t even mean the tech-heavy NASDAQ.  They mean the stodgy old DJIA.

There has been much discussion about the Dow now that so many of its members are trading are well under $10.00 (and some challenging $1.00).  This may sound like lunacy, but there are many reasons that this long-time market barometer should be killed.

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Posted on: March 5, 2009 – 4:42 pm in ETF, Index, , , , , , , , , ,

Stock Market Takes Out October Lows (DIA, SPY, QQQQ)

Down_arrow_red_2There is a disturbing event happening, and it is one which if gets much worse will take out much of the feeling that the markets have bottomed out.  Today the market index readings are challenging the lows from mid-October.  Now the challenge comes to whether or not these hold the closing levels and the intra-day lows seen at the time as of 12:53 PM EST today.

S&P500    833.68    (-18.62; -2.18%)

  • S&P low close 848.92 (Oct. 27) & intra-day low 839.80 (Oct. 10)

DJIA    8,111.81 (-170.85; -2.06%)

  • DJIA low close was 8,175.77 (Oct. 27) & intra-day low was 7,773.71 (Oct. 10)

NASDAQ    1,451.90 (-47.31; -3.16%)

  • NASDAQ low close was 1,505.90 (Oct. 27) & intra-day low was 1,493.79 (Oct. 24)

DIAMONDS Trust ETF (NYSE: DIA), SPDRs (AMEX: SPY), and the PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ: QQQQ) are the main ETFS’s which track these index levels, and all actually trailing in the volume severity sen with many such days.

JON C. OGG
NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Posted on: November 13, 2008 – 1:09 pm in HI/LOW, Index, Technical Analysis, Trading Alert, , ,

FOMC Cuts… One & Done?? (DIA, SPY, QQQQ, TLT)

Today, Bernanke & Co at the FOMC gave us their rate decision.  The FOMC has decided to the Fed Funds Rate 0.25% to 2% and the Discount Rate by 0.25% to 2.25%.

As far as we were concerned, the language, tone, and general fed-speak is now more important to us than the actual rate move.

At 1:55 PM EST today, about 20 minutes before Fed-Time, the key ETF’s for the market were as follows:

  • DIAMONDS Trust (AMEX: DIA) $129.27 (+1.09; +0.85%)
  • SPDRs (AMEX: SPY) $139.55 (+0.47; +0.34%)
  • PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ: QQQQ) $47.73 (+0.13; +0.27%) 
  • iShares Lehman 20+ Year Treas Bond (NYSE: TLT) $92.56 (+0.11; +0.12%) 

We still believe the U.S. is in a recessionary environment despite a positive GDP number this morning, just like Warren Buffett noted this week.  The difference is that we now believe the dangers of the systematic implosion and major spreading of counterparty defaults have passed.

Here were some of the FOMC comments and some of our conjecture:

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Posted on: April 30, 2008 – 1:22 pm in Uncategorized, , , ,

FOMC Comes Up Short (DIA, TLT)

The FOMC did just come out and issue its discount on interest rates today.  We saw a 0.25% RATE CUT FED FUNDS and we saw a 0.25% RATE CUT ON THE DISCOUNT RATE.   That 0.25% dual cut might not be greeted with much love because many were hoping for a 0.50% cut perhaps at least on the Discount Rate.  The FOMC has noted several issues:
Slowing and intensification of housing,
the strain to financial markets has increased,
core inflation readings have improved modestly but higher energy prices could impact that,
balance of risks with a bias to inflation is gone.

Here is the page where you can access the full statement from the FOMC and compare to prior rate cuts. Here are critical developments around today:

At 2:11 PM EST the DIAMONDS Trust (AMEX:DIA) thattracks the DJIA was up $0.37 to $137.76 and the iShares Lehman 20+ Year Treasury ETF (NYSE:TLT) was up 0.7% at $91.89.  The DIAMONDS are now down 0.4% or so.

We won’t rush for the doors nor will we get the pom-poms out for this one today, particularly as many planned FOMC meeting reactions are ultimately reversed more than once in the minutes after an FOMC announcement.

Jon C. Ogg
December 11, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Posted on: December 11, 2007 – 2:23 pm in Economy, , , ,

Fed Outlook Forecast & Regressing Minutes, Enough Ammo For Bulls & Bears Alike

The FOMC gave its first of its quarterly outlooks for the years ahead:

  • The FOMC now sees slower GDP growth, raised unemployment, and somewhat reduced inflation. 
  • Real GDP Growth expectations have been shaved to 1.8%-2.5% from 2.5%-2.75% for 2008, and 2.3%-2.7% for 2009. 
  • It now forecasts 1.8% to 2.1% for 2008 inflation on PCE measurement, based partly on flattening oil prices.
  • It sees unemployment at 4.8% to 4.9% next year, slightly up from 4.75% previously forecast.

As far as the minutes from the October 30 to 31 meeting,  24/7 Wall St.’s take is that "October vote was a close call" and additional insurance… that isn’t indicative of a FOMC hellbent on cutting rates.

24/7 Wall St. has cautioned against a FOMC forecasting for a myriad of reasons.  Academics speaking but not making an action generates that much more volatility in the credit and equity markets.  The good news is that if you are an active trader, you’ll get three more opportunities to make "Fade the Fed" trades.

Jon C. Ogg
November 20, 2007

Posted on: November 20, 2007 – 2:21 pm in Economy, ,

Bracing for Record DJIA Close (DIA, SPY, QQQQ, IWM)

Go back just one-month ago right after all the market malaise.  It was a fairly small crowd that would expect the stock market to be back at record highs in only a four to six week period.

Today the DJIA is up 190 points to 14,086.51, more than 80 points above the record close seen over the summer.  We are still shy of the intraday DJIA highs of 14,121.04, but this is more than impressive on the back of poor banking news this morning.  The DIAMONDS Trust (AMEX:DIA) is also on highs at $140.77, above the prior high of $140.46.

The NASDAQ-100 is also at recent highs, but nowhere near all-time highs.  The PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ:QQQQ) are one of the most liquid instruments out there and these are trading at $51.95 with the prior 52-week high (and well over 5-year highs) at $51.68.

The S&P 500 Index is a different measure and deemed as more representative than the DJIA or the NASDAQ 100.  The SPRD’s Trust (AMEX:SPY) are up 1.2% at $154.40, almost 1% under the prior recent highs of $155.53.  So there is still another 1% or more of actual resistance before new highs can be claimed across the board on broader markets.  The Russell 2000 at 823.12 is also well under the prior highs of 856.46, and its iShares Russell 2000 Index (AMEX:IWM) at $81.93 are also under the $85.74 highs.

So as you can see, the DJIA may be close to new highs, and the NASDAQ 100 may be close to recent highs.  But the broader S&P 500 and the even broader Russell 2000 still have some resistance.  This is still pretty amazing considering the news tones of four to six weeks ago.  Being a contrarian at inflection points can be quite rewarding.

Jon C. Ogg
October 1, 2007

Posted on: October 1, 2007 – 1:11 pm in ETF, Economy, , , ,

ETF Winners & Losers (June 14, 2007)

DJIA                     13,553.73; +71.38 (0.53%)….DIAMONDS Trust (DIA) +0.67%
S&P500              1,522.97; +7.30 (0.48%)…SPDRs ‘Spyders’ (SPY) +0.64%
NASDAQ             2,599.41; +17.10 (0.66%)….NASDAQ 100 PowerShares QQQ (QQQQ) +0.66%
10YR-Bond         5.22%; +0.02% ….close ETF iShares Lehman 20+ Year (TLT) -0.25%
NYSE Volume          2,813,638,000
NASDAQ Volume    1,996,214,000

These are not the absolute highest performing ETF’s because some such as the Ultra ETF’s use leverage, but here are the normal unleveraged ET’s that won today:

iShares MSCI Brazil Index                                         (EWZ) +2.76%
iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index                     (FXI) +2.58%
PowerShares Dynamic Aggressive Growth           (PGZ) +2.47%
iPath S&P GSCI Total Return Index ETN                 (GSP) +2.37%
iShares Dow Jones US Oil Equipment Index         (IEZ) +2.28%
iShares MSCI South Korea Index                              (EWY) +2.27%
United States Natural Gas                                         (UNG)    +2.23%
iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Trust       (GSG)    +2.11%
Claymore/Robeco Developed World Equity            (EEW) +2.10%
Oil Services HOLDRs                                                  (OIH) +2.10%
iShares MSCI South Africa Index                               (EZA) +2.09%

As always, even on a second strong up day there were some losers.  We back out the ‘inverse fund’ ETF’s and also the leveraged versions of each.  Also, the real estate group was the least impressive and we only included a couple variations to prevent repetition.  Here are today’s losers:

DJ Wilshire REIT ETF                                                 (RWR) (-1.16%)
iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors                   (ICF) (-1.14%)
WisdomTree Japan High-Yielding Equity               (DNL) (-0.94%)
KBW Regional Banking ETF                                      (KRE) (-0.78%)
Shares S&P Global Healthcare                                 (IXJ) (0.58%)
iShares MSCI Malaysia Index                                     (EWM) (0.42%)

Jon C. Ogg
June 14, 2007

Posted on: June 14, 2007 – 4:14 pm in ETF, HI/LOW, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,