Congrats to world markets: we are in celebration mode. The Dow finally hit 10,000 pts. Although we are still far from the 14,164.53 pts level at the peak of the bubble two years ago, I’ll take 10,000 pts on the Dow any day! This is up +50% from the March lows. As the US Dollar technically broke-down, Crude oil broke $75 and Gold climbed to a record $1070. The rally today was sparked by handsome earning beats from Intel and JP Morgan.

Intel didn’t only beat earnings, but raised guidance for next quarter to levels it wasn’t expected to reach until late next year. JP Morgan cruised past even the most optimistic analysts ($0.65 cents/share) by posting stellar earnings of $0.82 cents/share. It already started reaping benefits from the Bear Sterns take-over as its fixed-income revenues dramatically increased. Many analysts expected beats on cost-saving, but these two earnings were top-line driven (revenue) which is very encouraging. We may have a 10% correction sometime in the 4th quarter, but anyone still talking about a bear market rally must give up and stop fighting the green tape.

It is imminent that this optimisim will get its way to the GCC and I see upside in the region. Although I agree with some of Saud’s bearish points, I personally second Sal’s point about how much is already priced into the market. I believe the upside/dowside (risk/reward) trade is very attractive from a long-equities perspective.

Tags: Dow Hits 10000, Dow Jones Industrial Average, GCC, Kuwait

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 9:15 pm and is filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.