Soft Landing?
Economic news showing a braking economy has stocks set to open sharply higher
Friday, as an increase in the unemployment level suggests the Federal Reserve
may have succeeded at engineering the proverbial “soft landing.”
The August jobs report showed that the unemployment rate rose to 4.1% which
was higher than the unchanged 4.0% level analysts had expected. In addition, the
average hourly wage increased 0.3% which was lower than the expected 0.4%, and
just 140,000 new jobs were added and that was also lower than the anticipated
160,000.
The Dow futures are up 55 points, and the Nasdaq futures are up 81 points.
The S&Ps look to open up 12.30 points while the yield on the 10-year
Treasury note has eased to 5.70%.
Friday Movers
Renewed optimism about the Lycos
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both stocks moving higher in early-morning action. Lycos closed Thursday at 70
15/16 and is trading up to 76 in pre-market activity while Terra is trading up
to 46 1/4 after closing Thursday at 40 1/4.
Yahoo!
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article questioning the company’s reliance on Internet ad revenues. Yahoo!
closed Thursday at 121 1/2 and is trading down to 119 in pre-market activity.
Thursday Follow-up
After trading and closing Thursday at an all-time high, shares of Oracle
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are trading higher in early morning action. Oracle closed Thursday up 2 11/16 to
90 15/16 and is trading up to 92 3/4 in pre-market activity.
Also set to open in record territory is Sun Microsystems
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is trading up to 128 5/8 following a Thursday close of 126 15/16.