Thursday Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets

Good Morning!

Index Futures Pointing to Flat Open ... UBS May Write Down Another $6.9 Billion ... Crude Oil Climbs Above $145 ... Yahoo! Up in Premarket ... Goldman Downgrades Health Insurers ... Nvidia Cuts Sales Forecast, Down in Premarket ... Jobs Reported Expected to Confirm Economic Slowdown ...

If your stock trading could use a boost, then treat yourself to a free, 7-day trial to our Short Term PowerRatings. The highest rated Short Term PowerRatings stocks have outperformed the average stock by a margin of nearly 17 to 1 after five days. Click here to start your free trial today!

TradingMarkets 5 Business Stories You Need to Know

Starbucks: Close Locally, Open Globally - BusinessWeek
Closing stores in the U.S., Starbucks' plans for global expansion live on as the company remains on track for an additional 3,500 stores around the world. Will the rest of the world come to Starbuck's rescue?

Starbucks is the Featured Stock in our TradingMarkets Up or Down Stock Contest. You have until 4 p.m. EST today to tell us whether you think Starbucks will be Up or Down on Monday. Click here to register for free for your chance to win $1,000 by correctly guessing the direction of a stock!

Yahoo Seeks New Partners - Wall Street Journal
Yahoo! looks toward potential partnerships with both Time Warner's AOL and News Corp, raising the hopes of Yahoo! shareholders that a deal that would increase the value of the stock may be reached after all.

ECB Raises Rate from 4% to 4.25% - Financial Times
While the Federal Reserve blanches at the prospect of raising interest rates for fear of hurting economic growth, inflation concerns continue to outweigh all others as the European Central Bank elects to raise its benchmark rate by a quarter point to 4.25%.

Meet the New Bear? - AFP
The official levels for a bear market in both the Dow industrials and Nasdaq have finally been reached. Is an official recession far behind?

Lehman Boosts Worker Stock Compensation - Wall Street Journal
Lehman Brothers will increase the stock component of employee pay this year. But is this an attempt to reward loyal workers - or merely a ruse to make the company all the more unpalatable to potential acquirers? Here's a contrarian take from Wall Street Journal's Heidi Moore writing for Deal Journal.

For more stories as they happen, go to our Breaking News section.

TradingMarkets 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Today

Here are 7 stocks for traders for today from TradingMarkets.com:

• Announcing no need to raise additional capital, Deutsch Bank AG (DB | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) reported that it would show a profit for the second quarter.
  

• Falling auto sales and fears of a slowing economy helped drive steel stocks lower on Wednesday, with U.S. Steel (X | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) losing more than 12%.
  
  
• Trading in Nvidia (NVDA | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) was halted shortly after the company announced that it would be taking a charge of $150-200 million and lowering its second quarter forecast.
  
  
• Shares of Blockbuster (BBI | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) gapped up at the open and closed ahead more than 5% on the news that the company was no longer interested in acquiring Circuit City (CC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating). Circuit City finished lower by more than 9%.
  
  
• Apollo Group (APOL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) closed up more than 18% after beating analyst estimates by eight cents.
  
  
• Starbucks (SBUX | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) announced plans to close 600 "underperforming" stores between now and the middle of fiscal 2009.
  

For a list of today's highest PowerRating stocks, click here.

TradingMarkets 5 PowerRatings Stocks for Today

TradingMarkets Making Great Traders

Welcome to Haggerty's House! - TradingMarkets
It's the final day of Kevin Haggerty's Open House today. Traders have spent the past week looking over the shoulder of pro trader and former head of trading for Fidelity Capital Markets, Kevin Haggerty. Expanded daily commentary, stock selections, market updates and strategy alerts ... There's still time for you to get your look at the best of what Kevin Haggerty puts together for traders every day. So click the headline above or call us toll free at 1-888-484-8220, extension 1 today!

Speculative Trading with Binary Options - TradingMarkets
TradingMarkets contributor Kurt Eckhardt shows you how to trade political events and even the fortunes of the polticians themselves.

Fading False Forex Breakouts - TradingMarkets
Not all breakouts are created equal, according to TradingMarkets contributor Alexander Nekritin. Here's how to bet against - and profit from - the breakouts that fail to follow-through.

Click here to sign up for the Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets newsletter.