Trading Up After The Close On Earnings…
Stocks rose
Wednesday. After a good afternoon bid,
the major indices closed near their highs. The White House imposed temporary quotas
on various textile goods imported from China. Internet stocks came back, with
Doubleclick
(
DCLK |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) up 10% and Yahoo
(
YHOO |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) up 3%. Gold finally hit the $400 mark
while platinum fell from its 23-year high of $779 an ounce. Housing
numbers released for the month of October showed a surprising rise of 2.9%, the
highest level since 1986.
The Dow Jones Industrial
Average
(
$INDU.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) rallied 66.30 at 9690.46. The S&P 500
(
$SPX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
gained 8.29 at 1042.44. The Nasdaq
(
$COMPQ |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) rose 17.90 at 1899.65.
The day’s leading sectors are
GSTI Internet Index
(
$HMO.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), 2.89%, Morgan Stanley Healthcare
Index
(
$HMO.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +2.33%, Utility Index
(
$UTY.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +1.41%,
and Networking
(
$NWX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating),
1.91%.
Weak today are Airline Index
(
XAL.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) -1.96%, Computer
Hardware
(
$HWI.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), -1.38% and
Economic news releases for
today included higher building permits numbers at 1.973 million. New housing
starts were up, at 1.96 million
10-year Notes were -170
at 113 075.
The dollar
was +0.57 at 90.90.
Gold was -4.98 at
395.22.
Crude Oil was -0.63 at
32.07.
Volume was
1,322,202,000 on
the NYSE, and 1,785,147,000 on the Nasdaq.
Market breadth was positive,
with NYSE advancing issues over declining issues by 1.49 and up volume over down
volume by 1.84; Nasdaq advancing issues over declining issues at 1.42, and up
over down volume at 1.69.
Top Dow stocks were:
General Electric [GE|GE],
+1.03 at 29.47, Hewlett Packard |HPQ|HPQ],
+0.69 at 22.34, Boeing [BA|BA],
+0.57 at 39.40, and Home Depot
(
HD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +0.51 at 35.46.
Stocks in the news:
After the close, Hewlett Packard
(
HPQ |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
announced Q4 earnings of .36/share vs. .35/share estimate, beating estimates.
The company had missed four of the last six quarters. Revenues were 19.9 billion
vs. a 19.2 billion estimate, with all divisions profitable. Imaging and printing
results were very strong. The company estimates 1Q at .35. The stock traded up
after hours. Intuit’s
(
INTU |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) quarterly loss widened due to higher
costs and expenses. Hot Topic’s
(
HOTT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) Q3 was higher, coming in at
.31 vs a .28 estimate.
General Electric
(
GE |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
announced it will spin off its mortgage and life insurance unit, worth $10
billion, through an IPO.
Qwest
(
Q |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) reported net income of $1.83
billion. A $2.5 billion gain was from the sale of QwestDex operations and
revenue dropped to $3.57 billion. Q is trading 4% higher on the news.
Thrift store Big Lots
(
BLI |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
experienced a 9.2% increase in sales to $948.1 million for the third quarter and
lost $6.4 million, excluding one-time charges.
Online advertiser Doubleclick
(
DCLK |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
received a buy rating from Smith Barney, citing higher online ad spending by
retailers. The company’s price target was also raised to $12. Shares gained 10%
on the news.
Tomorrow, look for the Book to Bill ratio, as
well as an Intel analyst meeting.
If you have any comments or questions, please
feel free to email me.
bricew@tradingmarkets.com