March Money Madness Round 1 Recap

 

The Market

It was a great week to have the opening round of March Money Madness as the market performed very well.  The S&P500 Index closed the week at 1,404, topping 1,400 for the first time since the financial crisis in 2008.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 13,232, and is now less than 1000 points away from it’s all time closing high of 14,164 reached in 2007.

The Nasdaq Composite Index passed 3,000 for the first time since the tech bubble in 2000.

Key Takeaways From Each Region

RIMM + 5.89% defeats NFLX +.76%

It’s quite a shocker that the 16 seed, Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIMM), knocked off Netflix (NFLX) in the first round of March Money Madness. RIMM’s stock has plummeted 75% over the past year as the popularity of its handheld devices has lost ground to the Apple iPhone. However, the stock was up almost 6% last week amid speculation that Samsung is looking to make a minority investment in the company and to develop phones based on RIM’s “BB10″ operating system.

AAPL +7.41% defeats AMZN +.4%

Apple shares rode the wave of its release of the new iPad and defeated Amazon by a wide margin.  Apple shares also nudged over the 600 mark for the first time this week as the stock continues its meteoric rise.

Financial Region

In the Financial Region, it was clearly about banks versus non banks as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley & Goldman Sachs all won their match ups.  Investors apparently gained more confidence in the country’s financial institutions as most of them passed the stress test from the Federal Reserve, although Citigroup shares rose despite failing the test.

ETFC +14.17% defeats BK +7.67%

ETrade was one of the non banks that was able to take out a bank this week.  The company released a report highlighting that its trading activity was up 16% over the previous month.  This is not surprising as investors tend to trade more when the market misdoing well.

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Comments
Sebrina Mullins says:

Hi Rob,
I notice in your example that you give,you use four basketball teams.Please don’t get Michigan State Spartans confused with michigan wolverines.We are the Spartans,mascot of a spartan,colors green and white.We take this very seriously…Thanks

bigchips says:

You are absolutely right, my mistake!