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Monday, March 16, 2009

Stock Market Weekly Update, 16 March 2009

The Week Ahead: The overdue bounce in the stock markets is the best since November of last year with all 30 DOW stocks up for the week and ending a four week losing streak. Markets will try to gain further traction on Monday's industrial production report followed by Tuesday's Producer Price Index and housing starts. Wednesday will end a two day Federal Reserve meeting on interest rate policy and the release of the Consumer Price Index. Jobless claims and leading indicators are out on Thursday and Ben Bernanke will give a speech on Friday.

Stocks to Watch: Sunoco Inc. (SUN) plans to cut 750 jobs this year which is 20% of its work force, but shares continue to weaken on the slower growth outlook. PPG Industries (PPG) also plans to cut 2500 jobs and will take a Q1 restructuring charge of .88 cents a share. Italian sunglasses maker, Luxottica Group (LUX) warned that January sales were weak and that the current environment is very uncertain and will not be giving '09 guidance. The stock maybe reversing a recent bounce. Finally, shares of Humana (HUM) have been rising based on takeover speculation.

Special Note: The large 10% move up in the major indexes can be construed as a technical bounce where a lot of cheap stocks rallied all at once, but cheap stocks don't make a bull market. The rally was led by financials, industrials, discretionary, materials, and technology. The FOMC meeting could be important in that the markets will wait to see what they may or may not be doing to relieve credit conditons going forward.

Commentary provided by Barry Ward, Registered Principal, NobleTrading.com, Inc.

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