'Fast Money' Recap: Catch a Falling Knife
The stock market was crushed Thursday with the Dow dropping 362 points and the Nasdaq falling 64 points. The team at CNBC's "Fast Money" tried to find the silver lining in the clouds.
According to Karen Finerman, the fear in the market started Wednesday with the language from the
Federal Reserve
. Jeff Macke believes the market lost the perspective of an active Fed and that makes it difficult to buy stocks. In Pete Najarian's opinion, volatility is going to continue to run the market up and down. He feels the financials are terrible here. He sold his
Baidu.com
(BIDU) - Get Report
position and he added to his position in
(GOOG) - Get Report
and
BHP Billiton
(BHP) - Get Report
.
Opportunity in the Selloff
Jonathan Merriman, Chairman & CEO of Merriman Curhan Ford & Co joined the "Fast Money" crew to discuss stocks he feels have potential in the selloff. Merriman likes
Smith & Wesson
(SWHC)
here and thinks it's a huge opportunity to buy the stock while it's down. He likes the earnings power and SWHC brand and he would be a buyer with both hands at $10.
Macke still likes the video game stocks like
Electronic Arts
(ERTS)
and
Activision
(ATVI) - Get Report
. He is currently long ATVI. Adami recommends buying
Aministaff
(ASF)
. Finerman likes
NYMEX
(NMX)
and
Crocs
(CROX) - Get Report
both of which she bought into Thursday's market selloff. However, Merriman thinks she is very early to be buying CROX here. Najarian favors
Manitowoc
(MTW) - Get Report
and feels it too was unjustly beaten down Thursday. He's also keeping an eye on
Zimmer
(ZMH)
which he feels is a buy now.
Kass Comments
Doug Kass, founder and president of Seabreeze partner, joined the "Fast Money" crew to give his take on the mortgage insurers. Kass thinks names like
Ambac
(ABK)
PMI Group
(PMI)
and
MBIA
(MBI) - Get Report
simply don't have enough capital to keep running. He reminded viewers that these firms aren't banks and they have no access to the discount window. Furthermore if the market takes out the private market insurance business, it will crush
Fannie Mae
(FNM)
,
Freddie Mac
(FRE)
and
Washington Mutual
(WM) - Get Report
. Kass also says his sources are telling him that
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
will get rid of CEO Chuck Prince this weekend in a special board meeting.
It's good to be the King?
CNBC's
Charlie Gasparino joined the "Fast Money" crew to discuss his take on the CEO turmoil at
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
. Gasparino agrees with Kass and expects that Citigroup CEO, Chuck Prince, is about to get the axe. Based on his sources, the feel right now is that Prince is out by Monday. The only problem is that it will be hard to find someone capable of running Citigroup. He speculated it could be Robert Rubin who gets the job temporarily while the firm looks for a more permanent CEO. Speculation is also swirling around Wall Street that John Thain could be in line to get the job. Macke says its obvious that Prince is gone and the stock goes much higher if they find his replacement from outside the company.
Najarian feels that
Bear Stearns
(BSC)
and
Merrill Lynch
(MER)
would benefit the most from a management change. He also mentioned that both MER and BSC have tremendous upside. In Gasparino's mind, Bear Stearn's CEO Jimmy Cayne would have to take a massive write-down for him to lose his job. Finerman is long
Goldman Sachs
(GS) - Get Report
and short Merrill and plans to stay that way.
Word on the Street
Crude oil trades over $96 before selling off to close at $93. Adami was surprised that
Exxon Mobil
(XOM) - Get Report
didn't go lower on Thursday after the company saw a decline in profits due to tighter margins. He sees the valuation on
Chevron
(CVX) - Get Report
as compelling and there could be a buying opportunity in the stock.
Tesoro
(TSO)
is another name to look at here. Finerman is on the same page and bought some Tesoro on Thursday for the attractive risk to reward scenario. However, Najarian thinks it's too early to buy the refiners and that CVX will get killed Friday when they report earnings.
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
bucked the trend on Thursday and finished the day up. Macke feels positive about the fundamentals and valuations in the technology sector. He still likes
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ) - Get Report
and he mentioned
was working Thursday.
Las Vegas Sands
(LVS) - Get Report
plunged 17% after hours on a bearish earnings report. Najarian maintains this one was way over valued. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that
Ford
(F) - Get Report
is looking to trim internal 2008 budget and spending by up to 15%. Adami remarks that this is good news for Ford and he is sticking by his price target of $9.75
Pops & Drops
Pops-
Investment Technology Group
(ITG)
traded up 2% after beating Wall Street profit estimates. Adami likes IGT.
United Therapeutics
(UTHR) - Get Report
exploded 38% higher after study results showed its inhaled-high blood drug, Viveta, has meet the primary end point. Najarian was wowed on this pop.
Drops-
Sprint Nextel
(S) - Get Report
fell 3% after profits fell 73% in the third quarter. Macke is no fan of Sprint.
Manitowoc
(MTW) - Get Report
fell 11% off of concerns for the crane maker's backlog. Najarian disagrees with the market and points out that the numbers are incredible and this stock is going higher.
Garmin
(GRMN) - Get Report
fell 7% on concerns over a bidding war with TomTom for Tele Atlas. It's a great company, but Finerman tells investors that the valuation is high.
Target
(TGT) - Get Report
fell 5%. Macke says TGT is a well run company, but he doesn't think they're going to report huge numbers on earnings day.
Face2Face
Viewers write in with questions of their own to be answered.
Cathy writes, "Are
,
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
and
Research In Motion
(RIMM)
trying to beat each other for the highest share price? Why don't they ever split? Macke says Apple and Research In Motion have split. He advised Cathy not to believe the hype on stock splits just buy less shares.
Scot from Virginia asks, "Mr. Adami liked
Fluor
(FLR) - Get Report
before he went on vacation and I wanted to know if the rate cut changed his mind on the construction services sector?" Adami still likes Fluor and he feels the story is still intact.
Phyllis from California writes, "I want to know what Karen is going to do with
BEA Systems
(BEAS)
with the
Oracle
(ORCL) - Get Report
deal off. I followed you in and I want to know should I hold or sell?" Finerman thinks by the end of the day we will see a deal with Oracle and BEA Systems.
John wants to know, "I own some
Dicks Sporting Goods
(DKS) - Get Report
and I know you like them as well based partially on their sales of names like
Under Armour
(UA) - Get Report
,
Nike
(NKE) - Get Report
and
Crocs
. Was the recent sell-off based on Croc's numbers and does this change your bullish sentiment on the company? Najarian tells John that even though there are some concerns for Dicks Sporting Goods, right now he still likes the company.
Coast to Coast
Thomas Herzfeld, of Thomas J. Herzfeld Advisors, joined the "Fast Money" crew from Miami to discuss his take on closed-end funds. Herzfeld feels that end of the year tax selling is pushing some closed-end funds below fair value. He feels that
Clough Global Opportunities
(GLO) - Get Report
and
DWS Dreman Value Income Edge Fund
(DHG)
are too cheap on a valuation basis.
Final Trade
The team gives their final and best ideas before signing off after a rough day in the market.
- Macke would buy Electronic Arts (ERTS) on a dip.
- Adami favors Intel (INTC) - Get Report.
- Finerman prefers Flowserve (FLS) - Get Report.
- Najarian recommends buying Cypress Semiconductor (CY) - Get Report for a solar play.
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