Cool Analysis of Fridays Last 45Minutes by Bespoke

The Afternoon Rally

The market rallied sharply from 3:15 to the close today on rumors that Ambac (ABK) would be rescued. For those interested, we put together a table of the best and worst performers in the S&P 100 in the final 45 minutes of the trading day. This enables investors to see which stocks led the market higher and which ones held the market back. As shown, MER was the best performing stock in the S&P 100 from 3:15 to the close, gaining 4.82%. MER was followed by WB, JPM, MS, RF and COF. Not surprisingly, the 13 best performing stocks in the final 45 minutes were financials. The only stock in the 100-stock index that failed to go higher during the market rally was MSFT (-14 bps).