Stocks reversed course just before noon today breaking into positive territory, but not with any kind of authority. NYSE floor trader Keith Bliss of Cuttone & Co. says expect more of the same for the foreseeable future.
“The markets will be in a tight trading range,” he believes. “All the hot spots around the globe seemed to have calmed down for some time. Outside of any exogenous event that we can’t predict right now, I expect the markets to be pretty ambivalent as we go through the next couple of weeks.”
He says the next real shot at a catalyst up or down is the March Federal Reserve meeting.
Despite trading at fresh highs, Bliss says stocks have room to run in this environment. “The path of least resistance is upward for this market and I believe that as long as we get calming tones out of the Fed, out of Europe, out of China you’ll continue to see this thing grind higher.”
Toy story
American toymaker Mattel (MAT) could learn a thing or two from Denmark, says Yahoo Finance’s Jeff Macke. More specifically it’s privately held dutch wonder Lego that could school a struggling Mattel.
While Lego doesn’t break down earnings, a perk of course of being privately held, they did announce the fact that last year they profited to the tune of a billion dollars.
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Mattel, meanwhile, is lamenting slow Barbie sales among other woes.
Lego has “done a great job of marketing to girls and that’s a great thing for the company certainly but for the girls as well,” notes Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task.
Senior Columnist Mike Santoli adds that for Lego, “they’re winning with parents” in a way that Barbie (CEO, doctor or any other variety) simply isn’t
Nasdaq 5000
The Nasdaq (^IXIC) is popping in the second half of the session, but even if it were to eclipse that big round 5000 it really won’t matter, at least to Lance Roberts at StreetTalk Live. He notes that, adjusted for inflation the “real” all-time high is actually 7110.49.
Related: How to handle market highs
“This is the kind of thing the bears pull out when they’ve been behind the market for years,” says Task.
So does Nasdaq 5000 really mean that much? Jeff Macke, while usually not overly excited, notes that Nasdaq 5000 is a testament to resiliency and is, in a word, “impressive.”
Santoli says the move to new highs says more about how crazy things were 15 years ago, that it took that long to get back.
Uber rewards
And finally today, word out of the popular car service Uber. Users of the service will now earn Starwood Hotel (HOT) points for every dollar they spend with rapidly growing transportation company.
While neither company disclosed the terms of the deal they have struck, Jeff Macke posits “Starwood is paying for the honor of being a part of the Uber experience rather than the other way around.”
Uber runs its service in 150 cities in the U.S. and Canada and in many more around the world. They have a unique opportunity, Santoli says, to be in a position to cut such a deal with Starwood whereas local cab companies that operate in a small, fixed base do not.
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