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Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:
Below are the S&P 500 stocks that were the most oversold heading into today. We've seen a nice bounce so far this morning, but these names have quite a ways to go to get out of oversold territory.As shown, SanDisk (SNDK) is the most oversold name in the index and is trading nearly three standard deviations below its 50-day moving average. Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) ranks second, followed by Medtronic (MDT) and then Charles Schwab (SCHW). While a tech stock is the most oversold, the bulk of the names on the list are in the Financial sector.Complete Story »

Trader Mark submits:With the S&P 500 grasping at 1070, and yet another "90% day" as the student body has run back to the left ("risk off" stampede), let's take a look ahead at the key reports next week; both for the greater market and what we have our eyes on. The next three weeks are the heart of the earnings season, and some of our holdings begin to pop up next week.Names the market will focus on:Complete Story »

Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) is the unchallenged global leader in the emerging field of minimally invasive robotic surgery. Over the last three years, Intuitive has one of the two best performing stocks of companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange with a market capitalization of at least $10 billion. Only the stock of the Chinese search engine Baidu (BIDU) has been able to match that performance. Over the last five years, the value of Intuitive stock has grown 563 percent. During this period, Apple (AAPL) has the only other Nasdaq-listed stock that has achieved this remarkable performance among companies worth over $10 billion.Complete Story »

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:
While the dollar price of a stock has nothing to do with its valuation, lots of investors out there let price influence their investment decisions. Some investors stay away from high-priced stocks because "they're too expensive" and like to buy low priced stocks because "they're cheap." For some reason, buying 500 shares of a $2 stock seems more appealing to them than buying 5 shares of a $200 stock. For most investment purposes, this is foolish, but it happens. Below we highlight the number of stocks in the Russell 3,000 that are currently trading over $100/share and under $10/share. We also highlight what the numbers were on the day of the market's all-time high (10/9/07) and the day of the bear market low (3/9/09). As shown, there are currently 45 stocks in the Russell 3,000 trading over $100/share. There are 766 trading under $10/share. At the market's peak in 2007, there were 81 $100+ stocks and 340 stocks under $10. On the day of the bear market low, there were only 15 stocks trading over $100, and there were 1,519 trading under $10!Complete Story »

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:
Today is the unofficial end to earnings season with Wal-Mart's (WMT) report. Below we highlight the stocks that had the best and worst days on their earnings reports this season. For stocks that report in the morning, we use that day's change. For stocks that report in the evening, we use the next day's change. As shown, Affymetrix (AFFX), Pacer (PACR), and TheStreet.com (TSCM) had the best reactions to earnings reports this season with gains of more than 28%. The S&P 500 stocks on the list of best performers include Eastman Kodak (EK), Harman (HAR), DeVry (DV), Hasbro (HAS), Whole Foods (WFMI), Lexmark (LXK), and Intuitive Surgical (ISRG). Complete Story »

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:
With 2010 getting off to an even worse start than 2009 at this point in the year, it should come as little surprise that the current decline has been the sharpest since the S&P 500 bottomed in March 2009. One indicator we monitor on a daily basis and update each day in our Morning Lineup is the percentage of S&P 500 stocks that are oversold and overbought (stocks that are more than one standard deviation above or below their 50-day moving average). Currently, 305 stocks (61%) in the S&P 500 are oversold, while only 25 are overbought. As shown in the chart below, the percentage of oversold stocks in the S&P 500 (green line) is higher than it has been at any other time since the S&P 500 bounced off the lows in March 2009.click to enlargeComplete Story »

The Inflection Point submits:
With expiration week behind us, we may get a truer feel for the market’s thoughts on the current earnings season this upcoming week. Instead of focusing on the 10 most popular earnings reports due this week, we thought it would be helpful to focus on 10 companies whose stocks lie just below 52-week highs. Assuming that earnings are good for most, if not all, of these companies, the big thing that we are watching for is the reaction to the earnings. Intel’s (INTC) report last week seems to point to a lot of good news already being priced into current prices. The reaction to the following 10 reports may offer investors important clues as to the short-term direction of where markets go from here. This is our main reason for intently watching them and highlighting them here in this post. PH reports on January 19th AM Complete Story »

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:
The fourth quarter earnings season starts on Monday with Alcoa's (AA) report after the close. Prior to each earnings season, we highlight the stocks that have historically had the biggest and smallest one-day reactions to their earnings reports. To do this, we grab every earnings report for every company that has reported since 2002 and calculate its average absolute 1-day change on the first day of trading following the earnings release. For companies that report in the morning, we use its change on that day, and for companies that report after the close, we use its change on the following day. The absolute change turns negative moves positive, so if a company is up 20% on one earnings report and down 10% on another earnings report, its average absolute change for both reports would be 15%. Each of the companies listed below has at least 5 earnings report under its belt. Along with the average absolute change, we also include its current price, expected report date, and the time of day of the report. As shown, GT Solar (SOLR) has historically been the most volatile stock on earnings in our database with an average absolute one-day change of 17.76%! SunPower (SPWRA) is not far behind at all with a one-day change of +/-17.47%. Other notables on the list of most volatile stocks on earnings include Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), NetFlix (NFLX), SanDisk (SNDK), and Amazon.com (AMZN). Remember, this does not mean the stocks typically go up a lot on their earnings reports -- it means they typically move a lot in either direction on their earnings reports.Complete Story »

Phil Davis submits: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." - Charles Dickens, 1859 Dickens' famous novel (which was originally written as a weekly series in 31 installments) depicts life in the time of the French revolution but was also a parable, meant to warn the British aristocracy that they should not ignore the parallels to the social inequities that existed at the time in England. Dickens warned the nobles that the seeds of revolution were planted through unjust acts and surely there would be a time of reaping yet to come.Complete Story »

Phil Davis submits: First of all, what are you doing here?Why it’s Christmas Eve, Mr. Scrooge - Most global markets are having a half day so, if you are waiting for a Santa Claus rally on a half-day’s trading, you are very likely to be disappointed.Complete Story »