Time to take profit

Good morning,

It was good to start the trading session last night knowing that more than 80% of top economists believe that the recession that started almost two years ago is finally over. However, most don't expect meaningful improvement in jobs, credit or housing for months to come. Stocks begin the night extending recent gains at the start of a busy week of earnings, nudging the Dow Jones industrial average closer to 10,00, but was trading lower towards mid-night Singapore time. The Dow closed up 20.86, or 0.2 percent, at 9,885.80. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 4.70, or 0.4 percent, to 1,076.19. Both indexes had their highest close in a year and Nasdaq fell 0.14, or 0.01 percent, to 2,139.14.

This is the week of earnings reporting and the Cycle trend indicates the market will be trending up. However, I believe the market will trade within a broad range of +80 to -80 DJIA points since companies' sales growths are still weak and it was apparent that the earnings will largely be a byproduct of expense cuts, meaning end demand was still quite poor and the market will be sensitive to earning reports. So I decided to take profit for BHI at $45.89 and PMTC at $14.75. Not too bad since it achieved 10% returns over 2 weeks. At the same time I bought into CAH at $27.07 as planned and placed a buy order for BHI at $44.00. CAH closed at $27.16 and BHI was up 1.07% and closed at $45.36.

So did the rest of my stocks I recommended yesterday perform? OSG was up 2.6% to close at $41.81, EIX up 1.12% at $33.47, PTEN up 0.54% at $16.64, XTO up 1.45% at $43.49. Forest Lab closed 0.57% higher at $30.05.

So I was right to buy more BHI instead of PTEN. However, I missed out on EIX as I was too busy with my wedding to place a buy order when the technicals indicated a buy last week.
Nevermind, not losing is as good as making money sometimes.

As for my portfolio, I am happily sitting on my profits as Citibank is still holding on strong to closed at $4.77, up 3.02%, FTO up 2.16% at $24.17, offsetting the losses of BKS which close at $20.62, down -1.1%.

See you tomorrow.

Francies Cheng
BBus MAppliedFinance