How To Make 114% In A Day!

December 3, 2004
Brice Wightman

Positive news from Intel
outweighed a weaker than expected jobs report, sending the market
higher early in the session, and after bomb blasts in Spain spooked the market,
it closed just slightly up on the day. Nonfarm payrolls rose 112,000 vs. a
200,000 expectation; it was the weakest figure since July, but also the 15th
consecutive month of job growth. October’s sizzling 337,000 number was revised
to 303,000. Unemployment was 5.4% in November vs. 5.5% in October. Eight million
Americans are unemployed versus 140 million with jobs.

In its mid-quarter
update, Intel (INTC)
announced Q4 revenue will be much higher than expected; analysts were looking
for $8.97 billion but now the company says it expects Q4 sales to be in the
$9.3-$9.5 billion range. Margins are expected to be in-line with expectations.
The stock traded up 1.20 to 23.91.

For the week, the Dow rose 0.8%, the S&P 500 also
rose 0.8%, the Transports gained 2.1%, the Nasdaq added 2.4% and the Russell
2000 rose 1.9%. Despite the S&P trading at 3-year highs, bears point out that
economic statistics have been inconsistent, that earnings growth is decelerating
and that the strong seasonal trend ends soon.

With the weak jobs number, interest rates are
lower, giving a lift to interest-rate sensitive stocks such as utilities, REITs
and homebuilders.

Crude oil has fallen 13% over the past 3 days.
OPEC production is at a 25-year high; the group meets next week in Cairo.

UBS doesn’t feel comfortable with the rise in
commodity-based stocks such as Alcoa and Alcan, saying there is an
emerging cyclical slowdown.

Biomira
(
BIOM |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) said Phase II trials of its lung cancer drug were
encouraging. The stock closed at 1.53 yesterday, and traded up to an intraday
high of 3.77, closing at 3.28, or +114%.

A NYSE seat sold for $1.1 million recently; this
is down from the $2.65 million a seat fetched this past summer.

Dow	+7.09	10592.21
S&P 500	+0.84	1191.17
Nasdaq	+4.39	2147.96

The dollar was -0.99 at
80.96

Gold was +6.30 to 455.50

Crude Oil was -0.85 at 42.40

ce=”Arial” size=”2″ face=”Arial”>Volume was 1.56 billion on the NYSE and
2.39 billion on the Nasdaq.

Market breadth was positive.

NYSE	Issues
Advancing	2157	Up Vol 821
Declining	1171	Down Vol 554
Ratio	1.84	1.48
Nasdaq
Advancing	1493	Up Vol 1569
Declining	1607	Down Vol 652
Ratio	1.07	2.40

Stocks in the News.

Semiconductor HOLDRs
(
SMH |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) are in play after the Intel news; SMH
closed up 0.86 at 34.36.

The New York Times said that IBM may be putting its PC business
up for sale–worth potentially $2 billion.

American Greetings
(
AM |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) will cut 300 jobs to reduce costs.

Oracle
(
ORCL |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) was downgraded at Wachovia to market perform from
outperform.

BJ’s Wholesale, Target and Costco were cut to sell at
Lazard.

Ann Taylor
(
ANN |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) was downgraded at Merrill, JP Morgan and Deutsche
Bank.

Today in History

1931 Alka Seltzer went on sale

Brice Wightman

How To Make 114% In A Day!

BUY THE FEAR, SELL THE GREED

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