'Fast Money' Recap: Market Uncertainty

Karen Finerman said she was confused by the direction of the market and the disparity between the rally in the bond market and valuations in the equities market.

Author:
Publish date:: Aug 20, 2010 6:23 PM EDT

Karen Finerman said she was confused by the direction of the market and the disparity between the rally in the bond market and valuations in the equities market.

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- The markets ended mixed Friday as stocks fell to their lowest levels in a month.

The

Dow Jones Industrial Average

dropped 57.59, or 0.56%, to 10,213.62. The

S&P 500

dropped 3.94, or 0.37%, to 1,071.69, while the

Nasdaq

edged up 0.81, or 0.04%, to 2,179.76.

Jon Najarian said on

CNBC

's "Fast Money" show that it was encouraging to see the indexes rally off their lows, especially the tech stocks which rebounded strongly.

Steve Grasso was also encouraged by the rally in the S&P to 1,131 during the trading session, as he detected some bottom-fishing and mutual fund buying.

Guy Adami said he still believes the market is heading lower, although he said the bulls were probably encouraged by the low volatility.

For a breakout of some stocks from a recent "Fast Money" TV show,check out Dan Fitzpatrick's "3 Stocks I Saw on TV."


3 Stocks I Saw onTV
varconfig = new Array(); config<BRACKET>"videoId"</BRACKET> = 590358810001;config<BRACKET>"playerTag"</BRACKET> = "TSCM Embedded Video Player";config<BRACKET>"autoStart"</BRACKET> = false;config<BRACKET>"preloadBackColor"</BRACKET> = "#FFFFFF";config<BRACKET>"useOverlayMenu"</BRACKET> = "false";config<BRACKET>"width"</BRACKET> = 265;config<BRACKET>"height"</BRACKET> = 255;config<BRACKET>"playerId"</BRACKET> = 1243645856;createExperience(config, 8);

Karen Finerman said the market situation was confusing because of the disparity between the rally in the bond market and valuations in the equities market. She said today's rally was rather impressive considering it came at the end of the week with little trading volume.

Grasso said the catalyst for a fall rally may be mid-term elections. "I'm bullish going from October through December."

Adami noted he liked

Human Genome

( HGSI), which was up 3% today. He said it's a stock that works in this kind of shaky market. He said it would make perfect sense to him if it linked with

Glaxo Smith Kline

(GSK) - Get Report

Melissa Lee, the moderator of the show, shifted the discussion to

Bank of America

(BAC) - Get Report

, which hit another 52-week low today.

Finerman, who owns Bank of America shares, said she was not going to put any more money in the stock. She said she would rather put money in

JPMorgan Chase

(JPM) - Get Report

, which she said is better able to handle credit card reform.

She said the banks need to demonstrate more loan growth, adding credit quality improvement is not enough.

Adami reiterated his belief that this is a good entry point to get into Bank of America and hold it for six months.

Lee brought in Doug Kass, president of Sea Breeze Partners Management, and a columnist for TheStreet. Kass said he senses a "time for re-risk" is approaching. He said the market has been plagued by uncertainty over tax and regulatory issues, although he held out the possibility of some relief from the logjam.

Meanwhile, he told the panel he was buying the financials, including a lot of

Citigroup

, Bank of America, and

JPMorgan Chase

(JPM) - Get Report

Patty Edwards suggested

Leggett & Platt

(LEG) - Get Report

as a value trade. She said the stock trades at 12 times its 2011 earnings, owns the patent to steel-coiled bed springs, has a strong management team and sports a 5.5% dividend.

With all the deal making happening this week, Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus, said

Yahoo!

(YHOO)

would be well served to go after the Hulu video site. He said it's the type of deal that Yahoo! needs to grow. He said Yahoo!'s current reliance on cyclical growth and cost-cutting isn't working, and that it needs to get into video or mobile to grow.

From the option markets, Najarian said all the takeout chatter today was about

Akamai

(AKAM) - Get Report

, which has traded up to $48. "It's getting hotter and hotter."

Instead of trying to get into a guessing game of who's going to take out whom, Finerman said she would prefer to go with the middlemen like

Greenhill & Co.

(GHL) - Get Report

and

Goldman Sachs

(GS) - Get Report

, which figure to make a bundle from the M&A activity.

Lee sought out Michael Block, of Phoenix Partners Group, for some tips on how to generate alpha. Block said he was nervous about getting into crowded trades and preferred going short. On his list were stocks like

Intrepid Potash

(IPI) - Get Report

Symantec

(SYMC) - Get Report

and

Comcast

(CMCSA) - Get Report

There were no final trades.

-- Written by David Tong in San Francisco

To watch replays of Cramer's video segments, visit the Mad Money page onCNBC

Follow TheStreet.com on

Twitter