Commodities and Weak Dollar Help Stocks Float Higher

• By the tickerspy.com Staff
• On 4:46 pm EDT, Tuesday September 8, 2009

Stocks continued their winning streak after the long holiday weekend, helped by strong commodity prices, a weak dollar, and some M&A chatter. The market remains resilient despite September typically being a weak month for stocks and improved but still mixed economic data. We continue to remain generally cautious in the short term, despite the market's solid performance so far this month.

The Stem Cell Stocks Index was the top performing tickerspy Index on the day, led by Opexa Therapeutics (Nasdaq: OPXA - News) with a 270% gain.

Stocks rose to start the week, with the Dow up 56 points to 9,497. The S&P added 9 points to 1,025, while the Nasdaq climbed 19 points to 2,038. Oil surged $3.08 to $71.10 a barrel, while gold rose $3.10 to $999.80 an ounce.

On the economic front, consumer credit fell a record -$21.6 billion in July, according to a Federal Reserve Report. Economists were only looking for a -$4 billion drop.

In earnings news, hog producer and pork processor Smithfield Foods (NYSE: SFD - News) posted a fiscal Q1 loss of -$107.7 million, or -75 cents per share, compared with a loss of -$13.2 million, or -10 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding items, adjusted EPS was a loss of -56 cents versus analyst estimates of a loss of -56 cents. Revenue dropped -14% to $2.72 billion. The stock fell -2.2%.

Apparel maker Cherokee (Nasdaq: CHKE - News) saw its Q2 profits fall -29% to $2.9 million, or 32 cents per share, down from $4 million, or 45 cents per share, a year earlier. Sales fell -23% to $8.1 million. The small-cap stock rose 2.9%.

In M&A news, packaged food producer Kraft (NYSE: KFT - News) offered to buy British confectioner Cadbury (NYSE: CBY - News) for 10.2 billion pounds ($16.7 billion) on Monday. The offer included paying Cadbury shareholders 300 pence in cash and 0.2589 new Kraft shares. The deal represents a 31% premium to Cadbury's closing price on Friday. Cadbury rejected the offer, as its shares soared 38.5%. Fifty-eight Pro investors counted Kraft among their top-15 holdings at the start of Q3, while eight held Cadbury.

Elsewhere, Fairfax Financial Holdings (NYSE: FFH - News) announced it planned to purchase the shares in reinsurer Odyssey Re (NYSE: ORH - News) that it did not already own. Fairfax currently owns about a 73% stake in the firm. Fairfax's offer of $60 per share in cash represents a 20% premium to Odyssey's closing price on Friday. Fairfax also said it will sell 2.9 million shares at $347 a share, raising $1 billion, to help pay for the purchase and improve its cash position. Odyssey shares climbed 25.8%.

Fun and informative, tickerspy.com is a free investing website where you can track multiple stock portfolios and compare against 250 proprietary Indexes tracking themes from nanotech to agriculture to precious metals. Best of all, tickerspy.com lets you spy on the portfolios of nearly 3,000 Wall Street institutions and hedge funds and see graphs of their performance. Try tickerspy.com today and find out how you stack up against investing legends like Warren Buffett!

Buzz up!