Dollar Beats Up The Bulls

• By the tickerspy.com Staff
• On 4:51 pm EDT, Monday October 26, 2009

Early stock market gains quickly turned into a slippery slide down, as a strengthening dollar sent oil and stocks lower. Right now the greenback and government policy seem to be dictating the direction of the market more than anything following the huge run up to Dow 10,000. Investors will have plenty of earnings and economic news to chew on, including Q3 GDP numbers on Thursday, the rest of the week. After two straight triple-digit losses in the Dow, that long sought-after pullback might finally be here, right ahead of the end of the fiscal year for mutual funds (which is the last time they can book tax-losses for the year).

The Electronics Retailer Stocks Index was the top performing tickerspy Index on the day, led by Radioshack Corp (NYSE: RSH - News) with a 16% gain.

Stocks reversed course midday to finish lower, with the Dow down -104 points to 9,868. The S&P and Nasdaq both fell -13 points to finish at 1,067 and 2,142, respectively. Oil nosedived -$1.82 to $78.68 a barrel, while gold dipped -$13.60 to $1,042.80 an ounce.

In earnings news, glassmaker Corning (NYSE: GLW - News) announced a Q3 profit of $643 million, or 41 cents a share, down -16% from $768 million, or 49 cents a share, a year ago. Adjusted EPS came in at 42 cents, 3 cents ahead of the Wall Street consensus. Revenue dipped -5% to $1.48 billion, just ahead of estimates. Looking forward, the company said it believes worldwide glass sales may rise 15% next year due to strong LCD TV and notebook computer demand. The stock slipped -0.9%. Forty-four Pro investors counted the stock among their top-15 holdings at the start of Q3.

Electronics retailer RadioShack saw its Q3 net income fall -24% to $37.4 million, or 30 cents a share, from $49.1 million, or 38 cents a share, last year. Revenue fell -3% to $990 million, as same-store sales slipped -2.9%. Analysts were looking for EPS of 31 cents on sales of $961 million. The stock jumped 15.9%.

Telecom Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ - News) reported a Q3 profit of $1.18 billion, or 41 cents per share, down -30% from last year's profit of $1.67 billion, or 59 cents per share. Adjusted EPS of 60 cents surpassed analyst estimates by a penny. Revenue rose 10% to $27.3 billion, just ahead of estimates. The company added 1.2 million customers in the quarter. The stock fell -0.7%. Over 180 Pro investors counted the stock among their top-15 holdings at the start of Q3.

Earnings available to common shareholders at information-services company McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP - News) dropped -14% to $336.1 million, or $1.07 per share, from $390.2 million, or $1.23 per share, a year earlier. Revenue fell -8% to $1.88 billion. The analyst consensus was for EPS of $1.05 on sales of $1.94 billion. The stock dropped -3.4%.

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 stem cells to green energy 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!