If you're long the market, Wednesday was the kind of day that you live for. Stocks climbed higher across the board. Maybe you were like me, clicking on your Motley Fool My Portfolio tab only to be greeted by a sea of smiling green faces.
It was a pretty broad rally. Even the obscure had their day. All 10 of the stocks I had singled out in my two- part10 Stocks Under $10 article last month rose, and those are odd speculative beasts that make a habit of marching to the beat of rhythmically impaired drummers.
While market breadth will probably never be unanimous, it's interesting to note that the day's biggest loser on the New York Stock Exchange was MasTec (NYSE:MTZ), shedding 9.4% of its value. That's it? In other words, the Big Board didn't have a single stock claim a double-digit percentage loss.
Yet things are always a bit wilder over the counter. Maybe you're not doing much of a happy dance if you owned shares in Central Freight (NYSE:CENF) or Carreker (NASDAQ:CANI). The two stocks led a short Nasdaq losers list, each one surrendering well over 20%.
In Carreker's case the carnage is earned. The financial services company posted a slump in fiscal-year revenues and warned that things will get worse through the first half of the year.
Central's truck stop was not as simple to decode. The company had announced a $10 million acquisition that would sting the trucker in the current quarter. Bad news? Hardly. Even if it were perceived as bad news, it certainly wouldn't merit Central giving up $90 million in market capitalization.
No, the problem here is that the buyout was a bit of a smoke screen. It wasn't the only reason that Central was watering down its guidance. Deep into the fourth paragraph of the press release was the troubling fact that the company also suffered a significant drop in interline revenue through its system.
Rivals in a pricing war? That could get ugly. The market's smackdown on Central's shares? Overdone, perhaps, but the gesture seems warranted.
Yes, it was a great day to be long the market yesterday -- and a sorry one to be wrong in.
Have any losers in your portfolio yesterday? Did it rain while the sun was out? Is there great risk in buying into either troubled marked-down companies or high-flying growth stocks? All this and more -- in the Turnarounds/Value Investing discussion board. Only on Fool.com.Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz knows that all his days won't be green smiley ones. He does not own shares in any company mentioned in this story.
