Meredith Whitney

Good morning. The bears had a pretty decent chance to go the other way yesterday, but, as has been the case lately, they once again failed to capitalize on their opportunities. And with Intel (INTC) knocking the ball out of the park after the close, it looks like the bulls will be off and running again this morning.

Our furry friends appeared to have the upper hand at the outset of trading on Tuesday. They had some disappointing data from across the pond as German economic expectations fell for the first time in four months. They had disappointing earnings guidance out of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). They had a couple of bearish reports from Bloomberg, with one entitled “Credit’s Divorce From Stocks Signals End of Rally.” And finally, they had their favorite cheerleader, Meredith Whitney, saying it’s time to take profits in bank stocks and actually downgrading everybody’s favorite financial ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today the market is a bit weaker ahead of earnings announcements on companies like GE, Goldman Sachs, IBM and Intel. We are following several compelling stories this week with some large earnings reports looming. Explicit Picks tracks and follows stocks market wide, however our primary focus is on small and micro cap stocks that we feel are poised for substantial movement. To receive our reports FREE of charge, investors simply need to visit us at: http://www.explicitpicks.com General Electric remains one of the most followed bellwether stocks in the market. Recent announcements of its latest testing of the "Small Grid," will certainly ...

One of the biggest stories on Wall Street today was Meredith Whitney's downgrade of Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) from Buy to Neutral.

Meredith, a noted financial bear, has seen Goldman Sachs as the lone bright spot in the sector. Now she says the stock has gone too far too fast and thus ...

UPGRADES:
Goldman Sachs upgraded POSCO (NYSE: PKX) to Buy and added the stock to their Conviction Buy List with a $150 price target.

Lazard Capital Markets upgrades shares of DryShips (Nasdaq: DRYS) from Hold to Buy.

Benchmark upgrades Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) from Hold to Buy. Price target raised from $16 to $20. For more color Click Here

JMP Securities upgrades Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) from Underperform ...

Good morning. With the S&P and NASDAQ higher for the sixth straight session and the Dow within striking distance of the magical 10,000 mark on Monday morning, it looked like the bulls were ready to don the party hats. However with the banks and the bond market closed, and a scary headline hitting the wires after lunch, traders appeared happy to simply wait for the earnings parade before making their next move.

It is no secret that the market indices are oftentimes more volatile when some of the players are missing and trading is a little on the thin side. Yesterday proved that point once again as a misleading headline created a swift selloff around 1:45 pm eastern from which the indices were unable to recover.

The headlines that came across the wires read something along the lines of: Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano says terrorists with ties to Al-Qaeda now ...