Stocks Are Down as Earnings Season is Set to Begin

The stock market is down a bit this morning. We’ve basically given back the surge from late Friday. This week, the market is focused on the start of earnings season. Alcoa ($AA), the big aluminum company, is due to report earnings today.

Even though profits are expected to decline slightly, Wall Street is optimistic for stocks right now. Of the 500 stocks in the S&P 500, 247 have net buy ratings. That’s the most in 12 years. According to numbers from Bloomberg, Wall Street analysts have 9.4 times the number of buy ratings than the number of sell ratings. That’s actually up from 8.4 one year ago.

Healthcare is the only sector that’s doing well today. Financials, Energy and Basic Materials are down the most. I see that Wal-Mart ($WMT) is at a new all-time high this morning. It took them 12 years, but they finally took out their high from late 1999.

Posted by on July 9th, 2012 at 10:44 am


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