Trader Talk
- Wall Street Fears Dodd Bill
- Have Loan Losses Peaked for European Banks?
- Dow Industrials at New Highs—But Other Indices Lag
- Risk Trade Is Back On
- HMOs Up Despite Looming House Vote
- What The Street Thinks of The Jobless Report
- Friday It's All About Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
- October Retail Sales—The Good, Bad and Ugly?
- When Good News = Good News
- Retail And Jobs Lift Mood
TRADER TALK RSS FEED
MOST SHARED
- Herbalife Vs. Hedge Funds
- Apple Surpasses Nokia as Top Cellphone Maker by Profits
- JPMorgan Chase to Hire 1,200 Mortgage Officers
- Gold Heading to $1150: Art Hogan
- Parsing Treasury's Loan Modification Report
- Adobe Cuts 680 Jobs, to Take Charge
- Cramer Jeers J&J, Applauds Abbott
- Toll Brothers: More Contracts Signed, but Sales Down
- Bear Stearn Fund Managers Not Guilty on All Counts
- Beware of 'Trampling Effect' When Market Tops: Manager
- Gold Heading to $1150: Art Hogan
- Starbucks Brews Up Growth
- Farr: An Extended Period—No Fat Lady in Sight
- More Upside if S&P Passes This Number: Market Pro
- Murdoch Lashes Out At Google
- Fighting The Flu Vaccine Critics
- Nov. 10: Unusual Volume Leaders
- Shadow Inventory Dwarfs Loan Mods
- Retail Earnings in Focus Ahead of Shopping Season
- Apple Surpasses Nokia as Top Handset Maker by Profit
- In This Relay-Race Market, Who Gets Baton Next?
- Workers Staying Put at Their Jobs as Jobless Surges
- Three Things the US Can Do To Stop the Dollar's Decline
- Toll Brothers: More Contracts Signed, but Sales Down
- Ponzi Proceeds: Bidding on Madoff's Toys
- Bear Stearn Fund Managers Not Guilty on All Counts
- Commodity ETFs: Returns May Not Match Expectations
Text Size 
Reporter
Stocks briefly lost a little bit of steam as Fitch downgraded the state of California's long-term general obligation bond rating to "A-" from "A" and placed the bonds on Rating Watch negative "based on the magnitude of the state's financial and institutional challenges and persistent economic and revenue weakening."
Earlier, a broad advance midday, with strength in retail, healthcare, industrials, and energy, with gains due to:
1) Bernanke aggressively defending his record and even going on the offensive at some point, insisting that his actions prevented the global economy from going into an even steeper decline;
2) a strong 7-year Treasury auction, joining the strong 2- and 5-year auctions this week;
3) consolidation in the retail space with the Tween Brands [TWB
Loading...
()
] - Dress Barn [DBRN
Loading...
()
] deal, and talk of more cost-saving deals to come;
3) Hertz comments about car rentals stabilizing. Hertz [HTZ
Loading...
()
] up 13 percent, Thrifty [DTG
Loading...
()
] up 23 percent, Avis [CAR
Loading...
()
] up 17 percent. Hertz says U.S. and European demand is stabilizing and the outlook for summer reservations has improved. Full year guidance is well ahead of Street estimates, and seems to be based on an actual improvement in demand, not just cost savings or higher prices.
In an interview on CNBC, Hertz CEO Mark Frissora said he was "scrambling to buy as many cars" as he could to anticipate increased demand.
Perhaps just as important was the fact that Hertz gave guidance at all; they had stopped providing guidance when things started going south some time ago.
Hertz is one of the first companies to resume guidance; is this the start of a trend? Right now, judging by what is happening at airlines and other transportation companies, they seem to be a bit of an outlier. For example, we have heard nothing about improvement in demand from the hotel industry.
_____________________________
Questions? Comments?
- Wall Street Fears Dodd Bill
- Have Loan Losses Peaked for European Banks?
- Dow Industrials at New Highs—But Other Indices Lag
- Risk Trade Is Back On
- HMOs Up Despite Looming House Vote
- What The Street Thinks of The Jobless Report
- Friday It's All About Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
- October Retail Sales—The Good, Bad and Ugly?
- When Good News = Good News
- Retail And Jobs Lift Mood
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes