At 2:59 pm ET,a Reuters article said that the Associated Press reported a rumor from an "unnamed official" that Delta Air Lines and United wre in merger discussions. Who is this "unnamed official"?
The stock open at $18.70, down 5 cents from yesterday's close, and shot up to a high of $21.10 by 3:06 ET. At 3:47 ET, a Reuters article announced "Delta denies merger talks with UAL".
Either someone is lying, or someone successfully manipulated the stock.
Oh, by the way, I am still waiting to hear who had those large put options on the airline stocks on September 11th.
I don't even want to hear anything about the Toronto Exchange being crooked.
I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
Today's Market
Trading today has been extremely volatile as the Dow was up as much as 62 points before closing down 83 points on the day.
Yesterday's rally was based on optimism that the worst of the credit crunch is behind us. I wish it were that easy, but I've always believed that things are never as good, or as bad as what we are led to believe.
While the rally in the financials yesterday was a good start, nervousness in the sector will take some time to dissipate. While the sector begins to mend, we need to keep that the financials (in particular the banks) are being accumulated by insiders almost daily.
I have a hard time believing all of the doomsday senarios being thrown around. Yes, the housing markets a mess, and consumers have done some stupid things with their money (or should I say credit), but all of these things will pass.
For those who pay strict attention to asset allocation, a market correction, and even a big market decline is an opportunity, not disaster. For those that invest 100% of their assets at all times, well, that's a different story.
We will probaly re-test the recent lows in the market. Despite yesterday's 300 +++ rally, Bank of America announced another $3 billion dollar write-down, and HSBC said it would have to write down another $3.4 billion because of exposure to subprime loans.
Boy, I'll bet the Chinese are not very happy that they got in bed with U.S. investment banks.
The biggest lie of the day was the PPI report that said prices rose only .1%. The core rate was unchanged according to the report. Tomorrow, we will receive round two of the lies as the CPI report will be released.
Want to take a guess at what it will say? You got it! Inflation tame, core rate tame- same ole, same ole.
Oh, and don't forget about the initial jobless claims tomorrow. Since the US economy no longer creates jobs in export industries, I'm sure any growth we see tommorrow will be confined to domestic services. You know, jobs from food services, education, and healthcare.
