Russell turns red into mid-session; HBAN, AMRI, and FITB lead gainers

Small-cap stocks slipped back into negative territory after a brief morning rally stalled out. Large-cap indices were hovering near steady levels reflecting investor indecision about the stimulus and bank bail out package as traders basically were sitting on their hands waiting on fresh news out of Washington. Some of today’s small-cap gainers were Huntington Bancshares (Nasdaq:HBAN), Albany Molecular Research (Nasdaq:AMRI) and Fifth Third Bancorp(Nasdaq:FITB).

Other Market Watch highlights today included:

• The light volume pullback so far today for small caps really was not that big a warning sign for the chart picture.   
• Homebuilders, retailers, apparel firms, health-care facilities and electronic component companies were down at midday.  
• Despite the upside bump from banks and energy, small caps were still struggling overall and were clearly lagging the large-cap stocks.  
• Energy shares were another source of strength today, with the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund up 1.3% at midday.  
• The KBW Banking Index was up 2.5% at mid-session. 

Small Cap Gainers:

• Huntington Bancshares rises 22% as many regional banks saw a rise today. See (Nasdaq:HBAN).  
• Albany Molecular Research turns around to profit in Q4; shares rise over 13%. See (Nasdaq:AMRI).  
• Small-cap regonail bank Fifth Third Bancorp jumped 12.5%, and was clearly not rattled by a rpice cut on the stock from Morgan Stanley.  See (Nasdaq:FITB)
• Volcano Corp. rose 7% as the market of heart products gapped higher without any apparent fresh news behind the move. See (Nasdaq:VOLC).

Small Cap Losers:

• Small-cap homebuilder Centex Corp. was off 3.7%. See (NYSE:CTX).  
• On the homebuilder front, the ISE Homebuilder Index was off 1.3%, with similar losses seen for small-cap builders such as KB Home and Lennar Corp. See (NYSE:KB) and (NYSE:LEN). 

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