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War Is Hell, The Markets Turn Down Mid-Session (LEH)(MER)(INTC)(CSCO)(AAPL)(EBAY)(RIMM)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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AngrybearWith a $6 a barrel drop in oil prices, this was supposed to be one of the best days of the year for the stock markets. The Nasdaq opened up 55 points at 2,402 and then reversed itself to trade down .5% at 2 PM. The S&P 500 moved up almost 20 point in early trading and then swung down .2%.

The market has made a simple decision. The economy is not getting any better. It is getting worse. Oil at $110 will not help enough to offset falling personal income, rising unemployment, a tough housing market, and attrition in corporate spending.

Tech was supposed to be the last sector to fall in a GDP pull-back. Today, Intel (INTC), Cisco (CSCO), Apple (AAPL), RIM (RIMM), and Ebay (EBAY) are all off. If the market does trade based on its view of the state of companies six months in the future, tech earnings will be mauled by year-end.

Wall St. also turned against the weakest members of the financial sector. Rumors that the Korea Development Bank would take a stake in Lehman (LEH) encouraged traders to believe that the company still had some partially hidden value. Lehman’s stock moved down over 2% despite what should have been viewed at a positive development. Merrill Lynch (MER) sold down as well. The thin line of traders who believe that the worst in write-offs is over has been breached.

It is becoming harder and harder for investors to see rallies as built on anything other than sand.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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