Career News 24/7: MARKET RALLY CRUMBLES IN THE FINAL MINUTES OF THE DAY: Here's What You Need To Know, February 28, 2013

Thursday, February 28, 2013

MARKET RALLY CRUMBLES IN THE FINAL MINUTES OF THE DAY: Here's What You Need To Know, February 28, 2013

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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Markets were up for most of the day. Midday, the Dow was up as much as 75 point. Stocks were about to close at a new highs. But the rally disappeared.

First the scoreboard:

Dow: 14,054, -20.8 pts, -0.1 percent
S&P 500: 1,514, -1.3 pts, -0.0 percent
NASDAQ: 3,160, -2.0 pts, -0.0 percent

And now the top stories:

The Dow and S&P closed almost at a new post-crisis, bull-market high again. But a weird late day sell-off put the markets barely in the red. Still, both indices are very near their all-time highs. The Dow closed at its all-time high of 14,164 on October 9, 2007. The S&P closed at its all-time high of 1,565 that same day.
Meanwhile, the we have reached the deadline for the sequester. Sequestration is the $85 billion worth of Federal budget cuts that will begin to ripple across the economy tomorrow.
There were two big economic reports today. First was the revision to Q4 GDP. It was bumped up to +0.1 percent from -0.1 percent a month ago. However, it was still worse than the expectation for +0.5 percent. Even worse, the personal consumption component was revised down to +2.1 percent. "In a way, I would have rather had it stay negative and had the old details that I had before," said UBS's Drew Matus.
Initial jobless claims, however, was more encouraging. Claims fell to 344k from 362k a week ago. This was lower than the 360k expected by economists.
In notable stock market moves, JC Penney cratered today after the company reported a massive quarterly net loss of $1.95 per share. This was due to a breath-taking collapse in same-store sales. One of the big losers in this was hedge funder Bill Ackman, who has a massive investment in the company.
Another big mover in the markets was Herbalife, the company that's being accused of being a pyramid scheme by hedge funder Bill Ackman. Herbalife announced that it was adding two Carl Icahn nominees to its board of directors. Icahn, who has a big investment in the company, benefitted from the stock's 7 percent rally today. Meanwhile, Ackman was a loser again.
Don't Miss: WALTER ZIMMERMAN: Every Indicator I Follow Shows The Market Is Going To Tank, And There Will Be A New Financial Crisis >