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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Charles Payne: 3 Stocks, Charles' Choice

Charles Payne, Contributor

FOXBusiness

Three Stocks

JPMorgan Chase (JPM): JPM was hammered yesterday on lower earnings estimates from Mike Mayo of Deutsche Bank who now sees 18 cents a share profit for the quarter, down from his previous estimate of 53 cents a share -- and there was also scuttlebutt the company will post a loss.

IntercontinentalExchange (ICE): ICE said its average daily commission on OTC energy trades in December was $870,934, down from $912,967 in the year-ago period.

AYI reports earnings before the opening bell and while not a household name the stock has held up and comments from management could be extrapolated to the broader economy.

Football and Real Life

The magic of movies is that audiences voluntarily suspend common sense and are ready to accept Brendan Fraser and Nicolas Cage as action heroes. That is the beauty of the whole thing. Watching the "Twilight Zone" marathon with my family last week, my son remarked how good the special effects were back then.

Of course, each year the stuff on the silver screen gets more and more realistic -- but at the end of the day when we buy a ticket, we become willing allies of the filmmaker. And so it goes that in the stock market we have been voluntarily suspending common sense and willing to accept a reality that isn’t matched up with anything tangible. I’m game because it’s creating fantastic money-making opportunities, but I implore everyone not to become so engrossed with the hype that we take our eyes of the real picture.

Yesterday was more like those older Nickelodeon machines than modern motion pictures. It was a very pedestrian session but there were flashes of spunk. Interestingly there was a fair amount of strength beneath the surface.

Although we are ready willing and able to play the game the fact even the make believe of movies can be so disturbing as to turn scare the wits out of us. One has to wonder if that could be the case on Friday, when the market is bracing for the government to announce the loss of 500,000 jobs in December. It’s a little macabre to think a number below half a million could be viewed in a positive light.