Staples Lights Retail Fuse
Consumer, retail, oil and cyclical
stocks led the market higher Tuesday amid profit-taking in techs, biotechs and
brokers. Telecom stocks weakened.
The S&P Retail Index
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gained 3.8% after a positive earnings news from office supplier Staples
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gave the sector a boost. The Philadelphia Forest and Paper Products Index
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rose 3.1%, Philadelphia Oil Service Index
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Stanley’s index of cyclical shares
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Among the retailers, Staples
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surged 2 1/14 to 17 9/16. The company’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal that he
expects Staples to beat Q2 earnings estimates same-store sales to rise 10%, two
to four percentage points above Wall Street expectations.
Elsewhere in the sector, Kohl’s
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advanced 3 3/4 to 62 3/8, Home Depot
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HD |
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SWY |
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to 49 15/16.
In the forest and paper products
arena, Weyerhaeuser
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International Paper
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IP |
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PowerRating) 1 11/16 to 35 1/2 and Boise Cascade
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BCC |
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to 29 7/8. In the oil patch, Halliburton rose
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HAL |
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R&B Falcon
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FLC |
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On the downside, the North American
Telecom Index
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forfeited 3.0%, ending a five-session winning streak. The Amex Securities
Broker/Dealer Index
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Nextel Communications
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2 1/4 to 55 3/8, Dow component SBC Communications
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Lucent Technologies
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PowerRating) 2 1/16 to 40.
Among the biotechs, Protein Design
Labs
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MEDI |
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PowerRating) 4 1/4 to 69
1/16. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
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15/16 to 96 3/4.