For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 19, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Ford (F), CarMax (KMX), AutoNation (AN), Apartment Investors (AIV) and Equity Residential (EQR).

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Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

CPI Up on Cars, Energy

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October rose by 0.3%, a little bit hotter than the 0.2% that was expected. If one strips out volatile food and energy prices to get the core consumer price index, prices were up 0.2%, also one tick higher than the 0.1%

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The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October rose by 0.3%, a little bit hotter than the 0.2% that was expected. If one strips out volatile food and energy prices to get the core consumer price index, prices were up 0.2%, also one tick higher than the 0.1% expected. A rise in energy prices was not unexpected. Heck, one only has to see what the price of crude oil and natural gas have done over the last month or so. For the month, the price of energy rose 1.5% overall. The rise was sharpest among energy commodities, like gasoline and heating oil, which rose by 1.9%. Energy services, like electricity rose a more moderate -- but still steep -- 0.9%. The rise in core consumer prices was a bit more of a surprise. However, the rising prices were very narrow, with almost all of the increases due to ...

Nov 4th, 2009 Precious Metals ETF have gone wild the past 2 weeks. Last week we saw gold and silver prices drop sharply as it shook out short term trader’s stop orders before breaking out and moving higher. Also there is a disconnect between the gold and the dollar. Energy commodities like natural gas and crude [...]

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% in August on a headline basis, a tick higher than consensus expectations of 0.3%. If food and energy are stripped out, prices rose 0.1%, in line with expectations. On a headline basis this follows an unchanged reading in July and a 0.7% increase in June. On a core basis it follows increases of 0.1% and 0.2% in July and June, respectively. The rise in the headline number was almost entirely a function of a 9.1% increase in gasoline prices. Food prices rose in line with the rest of the consumer shopping basket, up 0.1%. On a year-over-year basis it is a different picture, with core prices up 1.5%, while on a headline basis the CPI is down 1.4%. Once again, the key difference is energy prices. Given that the collapse in energy prices happened last fall, the differential in year-over-year prices between ...

BAD NEWS:  There is absolutely no sympathy in the stock market.  If you need sympathy look elsewhere. 

GOOD NEWS:  If you have trading rules AND FOLLOW THEM you will not need what the market will not give.

Let’s look at a good example of what I mean.  The following is a recent chart of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

Notice that in just the last 6 trading days ICE lost all of the gain from the last 49 trading days (note: the sell-off in this stock started BEFORE the negative news yesterday!).  For trend traders following the 21 TANKS as a good trend line support money was

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Yesterday we got news that the CFTC is paying attention to the ETF industry. I suppose we should be flattered, but I'm much more concerned than titillated.

 

It's not all that infrequent that regulators raise the specter of "speculators" in the headlines, and it's nearly as surefire a paper-seller as "man bites dog." Very few market participants really call themselves speculators, and the word itself has taken on near-evil connotations. If you'd walked into a cocktail party in May of 2008 and told everyone you were an oil speculator, you would likely have had a martini-bath and an early taxi-ride home.

Today's news was that the CFTC is looking into limits on speculative position limits on all "commodities of finite supply"—really, energy commodities. This is virtual handwriting on the wall—there will be position limits, just as there have been in agricultural commodities. It will be difficult to argue that the

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“If the American people ever allowed the banks to control the issuance of their currency, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless.” - Thomas Jefferson

Witching Friday brought on a surge of volume during the first 30 minutes of the trading session.  Stocks appeared to hold up relatively well during the onslaught of expiration trading by option traders.  However, selling continued to weigh on the market throughout the day notching another distribution day for the market.  During the first few weeks of a newly confirmed rally distribution days are blemishes that are not removed easily.  Unfortunately, the shape of this most recent recovery (v-shaped) eludes to another failed rally attempt, but that will remain to be seen.

The more pressing issue is the rapid pace the US Monetary Supply is growing and how global leaders

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Commodity Downturn During recent market turmoil and a meltdown in commodities, the Global Carbon ETN (GRN) has held up better than oil (USO) and natural gas (UNG), but fared slightly worse than the overall market as illustrated in the accompanying three-month chart. Key factors in the demand for carbon credits include overall power demand and the relationship between natural gas and coal prices since burning gas results in the release of less than half of the greenhouse emissions versus coal. Currently, the simplest way for power utilities to reduce greenhouse emissions is to convert from coal to gas. With the price of coal easing over the past few weeks, demand for more carbon credits resulted; although this effect was mitigated by a ...