It was a brutal day on the market yesterday with losing stocks outnumbering winners 14:1. Gold and silver stocks were among the biggest losers without a single metals stock on the NYSE, AMEX or NASDAQ posting gains.

Hecla, though, stands out as one of the biggest losers after tumbling 59 cents per share or 11.5 percent. That fall slashed the company’s market cap by more than $100 million in a single day of trading. Speculators, it appears, ran for the hills after hearing unemployment claims bumped up for the fourth time in five weeks.

480,000 people sought jobless benefits last week, and that means today’s unemployment numbers for January aren’t going to be good. Indeed, economists are calling for a 10.1 percent unemployment rate. Not good.

Why did Hecla get crushed?

In January, Hecla Mining Company’s (NYSE:HL) execs decided to sell some $2.5 million in stock. That was enough for me to jump ship. They’re all about the money. If they thought the stock was going to keep climbing in the short-run, they wouldn’t have sold (even if the shares were a tax liability as they claimed).

Taxes are a witch, of course, and it’s understandable that they wanted to avoid them. Still, the reasons why the execs had a lot of shares in the first place is even more troubling: Hecla had to defer their salaries in the form of restricted shares.

This all comes after to eyes-are-bigger-than-my-belly acquisition of the Greens Creek mine from Rio Tinto PLC (NYSE:RTP). In the wake of that buy, Hecla was forced into a series of equity offerings after the market tanked in 2008. They’ve been paying for it ever since.

I’ve been watching shares in Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS) get crushed for the past week. Trading at the absurd p/e of 5.5, its been the victim of pessimism over plastic, an earnings report that comes late in the season and general trading malaise.

Just about everyone seems to think credit card companies are next in line for a crisis, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone’s right. Take the case of Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), for instance. If you’d told me a year ago that they’d be trading at 4-1/2-year high, I’d say you were loony.

But, of course, that just means I missed out on a 494 percent surge in stock price over the past 12 months. See, when pessimism’s at its worst, it’s the time to buy, and right now, there are few other sectors besides credit card lending where pessimism’s still at high levels (real estate comes to mind and little else).

We’ll get a good barometer on credit card companies this week with the release of earnings from MasterCard (NYSE: MA) and Visa (NYSE: V). The two giant moons orbiting wallets across the country, the companies make their money off transaction fees. And just because people aren’t buying as much doesn’t mean they aren’t still paying fees.

As the world moves closer to a cashless society, Mastercard and Visa are perfectly poised to capitalize on the trend. And while they get all the attention, gems like Discover go unnoticed.

Discover Financial Services will report their earnings on March 18, 2010, before the market open.

The stock market has gotten pummeled of late, and it doesn’t really make sense. A handful of giant companies are finally turning in positive earnings reports, and investors are just shrugging the shoulders. Perhaps, it’s Obama’s plan to penalize the banks? Or it’s the health care bill? Or the fact that five banks have failed this year?

Investors feel shaky. Nonetheless, there are glimmers of hope out there. A lot of them that shining though yesterday:

1) Amazon holiday profit beats, sees strong 1st qtr. From Reuters, we learned Amazon.com, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Q4 revenue was up 42 percent. That beat estimates, and the company sees an even rosier Q1 in 2010.

2) Samsung Jumps Back to Profit in 4th Quarter. South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co. earned $2.6 billion in Q4 2009. That’s an improvement of nearly $20 billion over the year before.

3) New Windows helps Microsoft see profit jump 60%. “The software giant’s revenue climbs 14% in the fiscal second-quarter, boosted by demand for its Windows 7 operating system,” the LA Times reports on Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) .

4) In a big turnaround, Ford posts a profit of $2.7 billion. Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) posted a $2.7 billion profit for the year. That’s 86 cents per share versus a loss of $6.50 per share in 2008!

Here are some more:

Kia 4Q Net Soars; Targets 3% Global Market Share In 2010
Nokia Profit Rises on Smartphone Sales and Cost-Cutting; Nokia Corp. (NYSE:NOK)
Its First Profit in 5 Quarters Pushes Kodak Stock Up 25%; Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE:EK) shares shot up 24.6 percent on the news!
P.&G. and Colgate Post Higher Sales in Quarter; The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) and Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE:CL)
SanDisk posts 4Q profit on memory card sales; SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK)

What’s it all mean?

Samsung’s sales seem most promising. The company reported that most of their strength came from the sale of flatscreen TVs, cellphones and computer chips. In case we’re wont to forget in America, flatscreen TVs and computers are big-ticket, luxury items (even if they’re “marked down”). Once consumers start shelling out more cash for goodies at home, companies will start hiring, unemployment will fall, the GDP will rise and America just might feel like America again. That’s the theory anyway. And it just might be true – at least until inflation hits.

A titan in the gold and copper mining world, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. (NYSE:FCX) closed at a three-and-half month low after dropping 3.5 percent yesterday (Jan. 26, 2010). While calling the bottom on any stock isn’t easy, there are a number of reasons to consider moving into FCX on an uptick in price.

The stock’s gotten pummeled since distributing a 15 cent dividend on Jan. 13 falling 18 percent in eight trading days. That’s too far to drop in too short a time; particularly as gold prices have stabilized. Here’s three reasons then to give Freeport-McMoRan a look:

1) Profit-to-earning ratio. Freeport-McMoRan’s the third-biggest gold mining stock on the major exchanges with a market cap of $31 billion. The only mining companies with bigger market caps are Rio Tinto Plc. (NYSE:RTP) at $96.4 billion and Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX) at $35 billion. Freeport-McMoRan is currently the only profitable company among them, though. And they’re trading at a P/E of 12.62.

2) Earnings Report. On Jan. 21, Freeport-McMoRan reported profits of $2.15 per share. That smashed analyst estimates of $1.73. That’s great news after FCX underwent an enormous restructuring last year at a cost of $11.3 billion. Tighter belts and well-lubed wheels mean they’ll likely outperform their peers in the years to come.

3) Copper showing signs of life. As several economies around the world rebounded last year, industrial demand for copper started climbing. A report released yesterday showed that orders for the metal rose 2.7 percent in Europe in November, and analysts are predicting it may hit record prices this year on that demand. More importantly, demand from China has shown little sign of diminishing. Copper prices doubled in 2009, and FCX is the world’s lowest-cost copper producer. The company’s positioned perfectly then if things truly due turn around.