Top Takes From RealMoney

The RealMoney contributors are in the business of trading and investing all day on the basis of ongoing news flow. Below, we offer the top five ideas that RealMoney contributors posted today and how they played those ideas.

TheStreet.com brings you the news all day, and with RealMoney's "Columnist Conversation," you can see how the pros are playing it on a real-time basis. Here are the top five ideas played today:

1. Quick Long on CENX

James Altucher
1/30/2009 2:04 PM EST

I am taking a quick long on shares of Century Aluminum(CENX) at around $3.80, with a stop of $3.40.

Reason for the trade: Shares of CENX are down about 50% in a single week, after the company announced that it will issue $100 million (at the time 20% of the market cap, but now 50% of the market cap) to increase liquidity on the firm's balance sheet.

This is hardly a death knell, given that the offering price is $4.50 and that CENX has a stated book value of $29.87 or so from its latest filings

You can read more about Century Aluminum here.

2. Juniper Getting Pounded

Gary Morrow
1/30/2009 11:34 AM EST

Juniper Networks(JNPR) is down over 12% on extremely heavy volume following last night's earnings reports. The stock is one of the worst performers on the Nasdaq in the early going.

Juniper began the day with a huge breakdown gap that dropped it to new lows for the month. As selling pressure surged, the stock easily undercut its December lows and is now well below support at $15.