What a week for stocks. Last Friday morning, I wrote to you about why I believed that the market wouldn’t break down — but to watch out if the S&P 500 slid below 1114. Sure enough, the S&P traded right around that 1114 support level for most of the day… until a slide under the 1114 level prompted a huge sell-off down to the next-lower support level. Ouch. If you missed it, I wrote an update on Saturday on the Rhino Stock Report blog, addressing the implications of the market meltdown (click here to read it).

This week, the market has been pretty obedient to the support levels I drew in Saturday’s blog post (with the exception of a little scare during yesterday’s early trading), so I’m sticking by that analysis for now. All of the broad market indexes have been overbought for a while now — no surprise given the fact that we’ve seen an almost unrestrained rally from the lows of March 2009 until now — and a correction has long been overdue.

I think we’ll see some price stabilization next week as earning season stretches on and more economic data comes out. We want fundamentals controlling prices in this market, after all.

Becton, Dickinson Impresses With Earnings

While we only just added Becton, Dickinson (NYSE:BDX) to our Rhino Stock portfolio this month, the company just announced earning yesterday. So let’s talk about them again for a minute…

Becton announced first quarter earnings of $1.30 per share, topping analyst estimates by 7%. Revenue and guidance were also strong: sales rose 11% to $1.92 billion versus the quarter one year ago, and the company increased its guidance for 2010. Becton remains a great company for all of the reasons we talked about when we added it to our portfolio.

The Economy Grows and Toyota’s In Trouble

Today’s GDP report showed that the U.S. economy grew 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2009 – the fastest pace in six years. And while that’s great news from an economic standpoint, it really hasn’t translated into higher stock prices today. That’s likely largely because investors are still reeling from two weeks of tough market conditions.

Meanwhile, the biggest news on the street seems to be the recall that’s going on with Toyota Motors (NYSE:TM). The company, which took GM’s spot as the world’s biggest automaker in 2007, has halted sales and production of some of its most popular models, citing a defect that causes accelerator pedals to get stuck. Shares of the company are down more than 12% this week on the news.

Waiting for the Webinar…

After a lot of waiting, our first members-only investing webinar will be available to you next week. The video, which teaches you how to pick the best entry and exit points for your stocks based on technical analysis, will be sent to your inbox as soon as it’s live on theRhino Stock Report website. Keep an eye out for it.

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