Stocks to Watch

While the Nasdaq 100 continues to move higher and the S&P 500 shows gains the last 10 days, the PerfChart below shows that small and mid caps are starting to suffer. The S&P 500 is up just over 1% snce July 13th, but the S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600 are down.

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Shares of Cepheid (NASDAQ: CPHD) hit a new 52-week high of $40.98 before closing the session at $40.77, up 28.90% from the prior days closing price. The molecular diagnostics company on Thursday announced its second-quarter results, posting earnings and sales that beat analysts estimates. (NASDAQ:CPHD), (CPHD)

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) shares traded higher after the chip maker boosted investor confidence with its strong outlook for the third quarter. The stock gained 19.23% to close at $7.75, on heavy volume of 85.99 million shares. (NYSE:AMD), (AMD)

Shares of medical billing and records software provider athenahealth Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN) spiked 17.52% to $57.09 following Thursdays earnings report. The Company posted profit ahead of estimates and lifted its outlook for the full year.

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The Boeing Company (BA – Analyst Report) has entered into an agreement to acquire Solutions Made Simple Inc. (“SMSi”). The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The company expects the deal to be completed during the third quarter of 2011.

Based in Reston, Virginia, Solutions Made Simple Inc. is an information services provider for the U.S. government and the Intelligence Community. SMSi’s technology allows users to easily extract, share and query information stored in an unlimited number of data sources and applications with the help of its Twister data integration framework products.

Boeing’s association with SMSi dates back several years and the buyout would add important vertical content to Boeing’s product portfolio for two high-growth markets, namely Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and Cyber security.

Post acquisition, SMSi will operate within the Information Solutions division of Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security business wing. This se Full post…

26-Jul-11 16:25 ET Dow -91.50 at 12501.30, Nasdaq -2.84 at 2839.96, S&P -5.49 at 1331.94

The major market averages closed just off their worst levels of the session, unable to hold their midday gains. The Dow (-0.7%) paced today’s decline with the S&P (-0.4%) and Nasdaq (-0.1%) faring a little better.

Netflix (NFLX 266.91, -14.62) closed lower by 5.2% after beating by $0.14 in the second quarter, but on slightly weaker-than-expected revenues of $788.6 million (Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $791.2 million). The co issued downside third quarter guidance, seeing earnings per share of $0.72-1.07 (consensus $1.08), revenues of $799.5-828.5 million (Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $845.6 million) and domestic operating margin of 13.6%. The weak guidance was attributed to the negative price impact of the its decision to separate DVD by mail and streaming. <

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Stock Rating Analysis THC BUY An increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Tenet a good prospect for high returns. CRUS STRONGBUY Cirrus Logic has shown significant advances in achieving substantial earnings growth recently, and analysts also appear confident these higher earnings will continue to grow in the near future. POL STRONGBUY The long term projected growth rate for PolyOne is rising, and this is happenening at a time when historical earnings have already increased significantly. PT STRONGBUY An increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Portugal Telecom a good prospect for high returns. Full post…

All fixed!

Greece is getting another $229Bn at 3.5% with about 30 years to pay it from the EU (ie. Germany and France) and private bond-holders will share about 1/3 of the pain by “voluntarily” renegotiating their own notes.  Sounds like a really great offer, right?  BUT WAIT, THERES MORE!  Another $630Bn of already promised emergency aid has now been places into a very slushy fund that will now allow the EU to throw money at any nation that so much as sneezes WHETHER OR NOT THEY ASK FOR ASSISTANCE.  This will allow them to play economic Whack-A-Mole, putting out all the little Euro-zone fires until that money runs out (about 6 months at the EUs current burn rate).

All this fantastic news from Europe has sent the Dollar down to test the 74 line and that was down from 75.37 just ahead of yesterdays open and thats a 1.8% drop so we would expect our indexes to go up at least 1.8% BUT none of them did.  In Full post…