Seesaw Day Ending Down

It was a seesaw of a day. The U.S. markets opened lower on sentiment with the international markets, but rallied shortly afterwards on news merger and acquisition news. A late rally in the European markets also followed this news.

Asia:
Nikkei => 7,086.03, -87.07, -1.21%
Hang Seng => 11,344.58, -576.94, -4.84%
Straits Times => 1,456.95, -56.17, -3.71%

Europe:
FTSE => 3,542.40, +11.67, +0.33%
DAX => 3,692.03, +25.62, +0.70%
CAC => 2,519.29, -15.16, -0.60%

U.S.:
Dow => 6,547.05, -79.89, -1.21%
Nasdaq => 1,268.64, -25.21, -1.95%
S&P => 676.53, -6.85, -1.00%

As for me:
AMD => 2.14, unchanged
MIPS => 2.19, +0.06
NG => 2.54, -0.16
AMD DG => 0.10, +0.01
BKC PX => 2.15, +0.15

The Top Headlines of the Day:
Upon the open the U.S. markets rallied to the plus side on news that Merck successfully bought Schering-Plough for $41.1 billion. In addition, President Obama repealed President George W. Bush's act banning government funding of stem cell research using frozen embryos that would have been destroyed anyway.

Some pharmaceutical companies that I watch posted gains on this news. For instance Genentech Inc. (DNA) posted additional gains (92.63, +1.77) on top of the enormous gains it made last Friday when it was rumored that the repeal would occur today (Correction, this was on the buyout move of Roche). Others posted modes gains after gaping up, like Geron Corp. (GERN, 4.51, +0.64) and Stemcells Inc. (STEM, 1.98, +0.60). Of course, debates about the ethics of using frozen embryos continues.

Maybe the Republicans should consider these embryos in the same honor and respect that they consider the soldiers who died and were maimed for this country. Or maybe the Democrats should consider the soldiers in the same light that they consider the embryos. From my perspective, a loss of human life is a loss of human life, whether it is by enlistment, draft, or parental consent. It is like two neighbors straddling the same fence but leaning to either side and trying to make the other lean in the same way. They are both still straddling the fence.

That is my opinion, you can take it or leave it.

Disclaimer: I am not a stock broker; I am not a financial advisor; I am not recommending to you what to buy or sell. I am just an opinionated investor. If you decide to follow in my footsteps you are taking risk. It is inevitable that I may be wrong. So if you are going to follow in my footsteps that is your own personal decision. I am not responsible for any loss that you may, and probably will, incur regardless of my opinion.