It was another roller coaster day in the capital markets, with commodities taking it on chin pretty much according to script.

In the meantime, we published Part 5 and Part 6 of our Build Your Own Investment Portfolio series.

And the Winners Are…

The stock scan conducted after the close on Wednesday found 15 winners and 61 losers.

The winners are listed in alphabetical order below. Click on the column headers to sort the list. Our scan criteria incorporates price movement, range and liquidity (500,000 shares on the day, 20-day average of 1.5 million).

Get your All Access Pass to our research and find out which ones to buy, sell or hold.

Media Digest

• Aggressive easing
  It is a sign of the times that a cut of three-quarters of a percentage point in interest rates may be considered modest. On Tuesday March 18th the Federal Reserve slashed its headline interest rate to 2.25%, down by two percentage points in some two months. And it looked poised to keep on cutting.
• Dollar doldrums
  (Editor: That’s what everybody thought…) The dollar has plunged in recent days as the collapse of Bear Stearns and the Fed’s discount-rate cut contributed further to its continuing slump. In trading on Monday March 17th the greenback fell to ¥95.76, its lowest point since August 1995, while also touching its lowest level against the euro since trading began in 1999. Although the dollar rallied on Tuesday, markets awaited the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate decision later in the day. Futures markets anticipated a cut of up to one percentage point, but there were fears this would cause further flight from the beleaguered currency, perhaps into gold.
• James Hamilton Says Fed Rate Cuts Lack Previous ‘Power’ (DOWNLOAD PODCAST)
  James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, spoke with Bloomberg’s Tom Keene on March 18 about the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower its benchmark interest rate by three quarters of a percentage point to 2.25 percent, Fed funds futures, and oil and gold prices.
• For Bear Stearns employees, collapse was unfathomable
  Just like that, some people’s stakes of $100 million or more in Bear were ravaged, and senior executives like Thomas Marano, the head of mortgages, and Bruce Lisman, a co-head of equities, were furious. Entering the weekend, Bear executives felt confident that the firm could be sold for several billion dollars, if not more. But $236 million — how could Bear have sold for such a price? Why didn’t the firm seek financial help earlier, they and others asked, as they grilled Schwartz and his chief financial officer, Samuel Molinaro Jr., according to people who were briefed on the meeting.
• Jim O’Neill Says Dollar’s Rebound Hinges on U.S. Housing
  Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., talks with Bloomberg’s Naga Munchetty in London about yesterday’s interest-rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve, his outlook for the dollar, yen and euro and Bank of England monetary policy. Minutes of the March 6 BOE meeting released today showed policy makers voted 7-2 to keep the benchmark interest rate at 5.25 percent, defeating calls by John Gieve and David Blanchflower for a quarter-point cut to shore up economic growth.
• Estimates of Iraq war cost were not close to ballpark
  Five years in, the Pentagon tags the cost of the Iraq war at roughly $600 billion and counting. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and critic of the war, pegs the long-term cost at more than $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts say that $1 trillion to $2 trillion is more realistic, depending on troop levels and on how long the American occupation continues.
• China Blocks Iron Ore Imports
  China is freezing some iron ore shipments from Australian miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton as part of its fight against industry-orchestrated price rises. Michael Widmer from Lehman Brothers discusses industrial metal prices.
• China Censors Web Coverage of Tibet Protests
  Part of a Chinese crackdown on coverage of protests in Tibet involves blocking access to the Web. Analysts say China has the most sophisticated Internet censoring system of any nation.