Top Day Trader Alerts (FITB, STI, CIT, AMZN, BCRX, LM)

This morning you are getting the broader summaries without links to VSInvestor.com because of an issue at the hosting and publishing side that has caused a temporary outage.  Here are brief morning movers:

Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) and SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE: STI) are both getting hit this morning on an analyst downgrade by Dick Bove.  Rochdale Securities has downgraded the bank to Sell from an already cautious Neutral rating.  At 8:20 AM EST we have seen STI shares down over 2.5% at $20.45 on about 10,000 shares and FITB is down over 4% at $9.92 on 65,000 shares. STI trades about 9.7 million shares per day and and FITB trades about 22 million shares per day.

CIT Group, Inc. (NYSE: CIT) is trading up this morning on news that could ultimately be bad for shareholders.  CIT has amended its debt offering terms under a packaged bankruptcy reorganization.  CIT is up 3.5% at $1.18 on over 400,000 shares of stock at 8:26 AM EST.  As a reminder, CIT was under fire on Friday by a Carl Icahn open letter to bondholders calling that the value of the bonds could be Par (100 cents on the dollar).  CIT trades close to 90 million shares per day and where this one closes today is anyone’s guess as of now.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) rose almost $25.00 on Friday on over 58 million shares when you include the pre-open and after-hours trading volume.   Average volume here is about 7 million shares.  And this morning at 8:30 AM EST we have shares up another 1.8% at $120.60 on right at 300,000 shares.  This will mark new 52-week highs  as the high on Friday was $119.65.  Bezos always wanted to build a rocket ship, and his stock is acting like one.

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX) is surging on H1N1 news this morning.  The company’s intravenous experimental drug called peramivir received an “emergency use authorization” by the FDA as a swine flu treatment  from the Food and Drug Administration as a swine flu treatment in hospitals for thoise with or suspected of having swine flu.

Legg Mason Inc. (NYSE: LM) is indicated higher.  Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz will join the asset management firm’s board after his investment firm has now taken a 4.3% stake in the company.  This investment is via Peltz’s Trian investment group.  3.6% at $33.05, but volume is still very thin as this is a listed stock under an NYSE specialist.

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Jon C. Ogg
October 26, 2009