Not much. The world keeps turning. And the world economy keeps falling apart. Here in Australia, shares of port and rail outfit Asciano (AIO) fell off the table after a Citigroup analyst changed his valuation of the company and moved it from “buy” to “sell.” Asciano is down 93% from its all time high and was down nearly 60% yesterday before going into a trading halt.

Asciano has $4 billion debt on the books (much of it inherited from when the company was spun from Toll in 2007). But yesterday the company assured investors it wouldn’t be beefing up the equity on the balance sheet with another dilutive capital raising. And chairman Tim Poole told investors earnings were in line with forecasts.

The trouble is that with all that debt and, shall we say, challenging business conditions, investors aren’t convinced the equity in the company is worth anything anymore. This

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Tuesday October 28, 2008 Navivest

Stocks put in a phenomenal day today, with the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 surging 10.88%, 9.53% and 10.79% respectively. This is the second biggest point gain day on record. To put it in perspective, we saw percentage gains in one day that Wall Street would be satisfied with on an annual basis. The Dow rose 889.35points, the Nasdaq, 143.57 points and the S&P 500, 91.59 points.

This was despite the fact that we got the Consumer Confidence report for October that showed a dismal consumer confidence reading of 38, a full 14 points below the forecast of 52.

The Federal Reserve is meeting today and tomorrow and on Wednesday afternoon, will announce their latest interest rate decision. Wall Street is expecting that we will get a rate cut and that probably played into the big rally that we got today.

The rally was as broad-based as

...

Paulson & Company made the following KEY Q2 trades in its $6 billion hedge fund, which can be tracked at:

 

http://trackthepros.com/stocks/category/273

 

New Positions

Bank of America

Cheniere Energy

Philip Morris International

 

Sold

Alcoa

Altria

BCE

PDL BioPharma

 

Reduced Positions

Yahoo

Hercules Offshore

      

Alcoa (NYSE:AA) kicked off 3Q earnings season yesterday with some ugly data. Its share price tumbled to a 13-year low on the news. Andrew Snyder says this is just the beginning for the aluminum giant. More losses are likely to emerge as more earnings reports are published. Andrew says investors should look for buying opportunities amid the violent swings in individual stocks.

Alcoa (AA) which usually kicks of the earnings season, by being the first large company on a calendar fiscal year to report earnings, has on Tuesday 10/07/08, reported third quarter 2008 earnings that failed to meet Wall Street Forecasts.

The company reported earnings per share of $0.33 vs the $0.63 that it reported in the same period last year, on revenues of $7.2 billion, vs the $7.39 billion that the company realized in the same period last year. Revenues in the second quarter of this year came in at $7.6 billion. Wall Street was expecting EPS of $0.54, on revenues of $7.23 billion.

According to the company’s CEO Klaus Kleinfeld, “Recently, aluminum prices have fallen steeply and demand has softened further, while input costs remain high,” said Kleinfeld. “The resulting margin squeeze will have a greater impact going forward, but will be somewhat mitigated by the easing of energy prices and a

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While we believe the intermediate trend for stocks is down, we actually saw positive signs in Monday’s 10/06/08 stock market action that could portend a very near-term up move in the stock market.

At one point, The Dow Jones Industrial Average, was down as much as 800.06 points from Friday’s close, hitting an intra-day low of 9,525.32. But at about 2:48 PM, we saw stocks make a final turn around to the upside and the Dow ended up only losing 369.88 points, or 3.58% to close at 9,955.50.

The Nasdaq closed the day at 1,862.96 down 84.43 points or 4.34% while the S&P 500 closed at 1056.89, down 42.34 points or 3.85%.

With the bounce off the lows that we saw in stocks today, we would look for stocks to undergo a technical bounce. One caveat however; we get some economic news this week that could move the markets downward.

Key among

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below 10,000 today for the first time in four years. The sell-off has been particularly brutal among stocks levered to commodities and the global growth story, with most names down over 60% since oil peaked in July, and many hitting multi-year lows. This summer’s surge in resources was mainly fueled by the thesis that the ranks of the world’s middle class are swelling in the developing world, and that these newly affluent people will hunger for materials. If you believe that this macro long-term trend remains intact, and that the current financial crisis amounts to little more than a speed bump, then it is a good idea to compile a shopping list of cyclical stocks that could bounce back hard during a broader market turnaround.

There were several indications that today’s intraday lows could mark at least a short-term bottom. The

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Tudor Hedge FundTudor Hedge Fund 13F Holdings AnalysisThis post is being written as part of HedgeFundBlogger.com's Investment Securities Tool which analyzes the holdings of hedge fund managers.Next up in the macro hedge fund tracking series we have Tudor Investment Corp, the brainchild of Paul Tudor Jones. Taken from Wikipedia, the bio of PTJ is as follows: "In 1980 he founded Tudor Investment Corporation which is today a leading asset management firm headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut. The Tudor Group, which consists of Tudor Investment Corporation and its affiliates, is involved in active trading, investing and research in the global equity, venture capital, debt, currency and commodity markets. One of Jones' earliest and major successes was predicting Black Monday in 1987, tripling his money during the event due to large short positions. Jones uses a global macro ...

As I write this on Friday morning, we are continuing to await a final decision on the proposed bailout of financial firms. The final outcome will impact market direction.

I would expect a short-term relief rally if the proposal is passed and signed. Failure to reach an agreement, however, could result in stocks setting new lows for the year.

Third-quarter earnings season will not "officially" start until Oct 7, when Alcoa (AA) reports. Nonetheless, 21 companies are confirmed to report during the week of Sep 29 - Oct 3. Among these are S&P 500 members Constellation Brands (STZ), Family Dollar (FDO), Marriott International (MAR), Micron Technology (MU), Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG) and Walgreen (WAG).

September employment data will be released on Friday, capping a busy week for economic data. Monday: August personal income and spending Tuesday: Conference Board September consumer confidence survey, September Chicago PMI Wednesday:

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Alcoa (AA) earnings are the traditional kick off of every quarterly earnings season. I don't really follow this name much simply because, while it's a basic material, aluminum is not exactly my favorite. But I'd like to show readers the reality behind the numbers, while the seals on CNBC were clapping and hooting and hollering about the "beat". I'd also like to show you a trend you will be seeing this earnings season, and the ones coming - higher input costs. And squeezed profit margins - we've been warning about this "era" coming since last summer. It's now here.First to the "great news" - Alcoa "beat" estimates - 66 cents versus 65 cents. So the seals cheer "better than expected". It's a joke. 90 days ago Alcoa was expected to do 77 cents, 60 days ago that was lowered ...