Dow Hits New All-Time High On Lowest Non-Holiday Volume Day Of The Year

zerohedge.com / by Tyler Durden
SSDD. Collapsing confidence, check. Housing Recovery meme toast, check. Volume at 2013 lows, check. BTFATH and send Trannies up for 13th of last 15 days (+10.4%), Dow near all-time highs again (thank you IBM buybacks), and S&P to new all-time highs… but don’t tell Treasuries (which stand +/-1bps on the week). VIX wasn’t drinking the kool-aid but the NASDARK session enabled futures to drag us back to higher before limping lower into the closer. The USD oscilatted around Nowotny comments and POMO ending the day up a rather notable 0.5% from Friday’s close and that pressured commodities in general lower (gold hovering at $1345). The last 2 minutes saw stocks scream higher on their own as the world was terrified it would miss out on something (but no other market moved) and all the major indices managed new highs.
US Equity markets have only one master… JPY carry levered muppetry…

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Should We Trust this Breakout in the Euro?

The Euro has had quite a run since the lows in early July. Versus the US Dollar, we’ve seen $EURUSD up from 127 to 138 pretty quickly. But here is where it gets interesting: Last week, the Euro took out its February 1st highs. If you recall, this was the Friday right before the Super Bowl. That Sunday night, while the lights in the Superdome went out, stopping play, emerging markets and Europe were beginning their massive sell-offs. By Monday morning, anything in the Eurozone was down 5-6%; it didn’t matter whether it was Germany or Italy – the selling was everywhere. Obviously, with their highly correlated nature, the Euro currency got just as destroyed as the equities.
So here we are deliberating whether or not to trust this “breakout” in Euro to new 52-week highs. I’ll present the data, and then you decide. First the chart. This is the Euro Currency Shares ETF daily bars $FXE (although $EURUSD looks exactly the same):

All I have to say is that these new highs better hold…or else….
Next is the sentiment data. This chart is based on a basket of well-established surveys. They include but are not limited to Consensus Inc, Daily Sentiment Index, Bloomberg, Ned Davis, etc. The Bands represent 1.5 standard deviations from a one-year moving average. Look how far above normal bullish consensus is right now for the Euro:

And finally here is the most recent Commitment of Traders Report. The green line at the top shows the Commercial Hedgers, or “smart money”, dumping this currency as fast as possible. Meanwhile, the speculators both large and small, or “the dumb money”, appear to be buying fairly aggressively up here.

So you tell me: Is it time to be buying the Euro? Or selling it?
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5 Bargain Stocks to Buy for Under $10: WEN, SIRI, GGB, DHX, ELI

In this frothy stock market, it’s easy to find stocks that continue to move to new highs.
But for investors looking for picks that are affordable at less than $10 a share, it’s getting increasingly difficult to find cheap stocks worth owning.
Sure, there are some battered players out there on the cheap like JCPenney (JCP) … but buying a cheap stock like JCP that is circling the drain is not the same as buying a low-priced company at a bargain.
If you’re looking for cheap stocks to buy now for under $10, here’s a list of five players to consider in the months ahead.

Wendy’s

Burger chain Wendy’s (WEN) has soared almost 60% so far in 2012, but remains under $10 a share and is still a decent buy for investors looking at low-priced options right now.
Wendy’s has had a rough go of things in recent years, but after the 2011 sale of its Arby’s restaurants to a private equity group the burger chain has been able to stay focused and worry about efficiency and modest international investment. Wendy’s re-entered Japan in 2012 and that same year managed to topple Burger King (BKW) as the No. 2 burger chain in America behind McDonald’s (MCD).  (more)

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Facebook (FB) is Doomed: Forrester Says Ads Tell a Sad Story

Forrester, the respected market research group, has just published a brutal report on Facebook (FB) based on a survey of 395 marketing executives. The conclusion: "Facebook creates less business value than any other digital marketing opportunity ... [so] ... Don’t dedicate a paid ad budget for Facebook."
Facebook responded that the report was "illogical and ... irresponsible."
The research company published a blog post discussing the report here. But we've seen the full report, and it's grim reading for Facebook. The social network ranked last among a range of online tactics that 395 executives were asked to choose from:

Forrester Analyst Nate Elliott concludes:

Facebook creates less business value than any other digital marketing opportunity. We asked 395 executives from the US, the UK, and Canada how satisfied they were with the business value they get from 13 different online marketing sites and tactics. You’d expect a site boasting the largest audience and the biggest collection of data to fare well. But we found that Facebook offered less value than anything else on our list .... The least valuable tactic within Facebook? Those paid ads onto which Facebook has shifted focus. (more)

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Atwood Oceanics, Inc. (NYSE: ATW)

Atwood Oceanics, Inc., an offshore drilling contractor, engages in the drilling and completion of exploratory and developmental oil and gas wells. The company owns a fleet of approximately 11 mobile offshore drilling units primarily located in the United States, Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean Sea, offshore West Africa, offshore southeast Asia, and offshore Australia. It also has three ultra-deepwater drill ships, and two high-specification jack ups under construction. The company was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
To review Atwood's stock, please take a look at the 1-year chart of ATW (Atwood Oceanics, Inc.) below with my added notations:
ATW has formed a key level of support at $54 (blue) over the last (3) months. In addition, the stock has created a trendline of resistance (red) starting in the beginning of August. These two levels combined have ATW stuck within a common chart pattern known as a descending triangle. At some point, the stock has to break through one of those two levels.

The Tale of the Tape: ATW has formed a descending triangle. A short trade could be made on a break of the $54 support. A break through the downtrending resistance level, which currently sits near $56, would set up a potential long trade.
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