What Triggered Friday’s Turnaround?
Stocks opened sharply lower, then bounced back into the green in morning with the major indexes plowing
higher to the end of the session.
The Dow managed to book its highest
close since mid-February. The Blue Chip Index gained 1.4%. The Nasdaq Composite
rose 2.1%.Â
Sellers reacted to the April
unemployment which came in at 4.5%, 0.1% higher than expectations. But stocks
recovered quickly as buyers saw in the news a strong rationale for a 50-basis-point cut at the next Federal Reserve meeting in two weeks.
“I think I have to be bullish the
way the market has acted here this morning with the economic news. They came out
of the gate acting poorly, and once they got the selling out of the way, I guess
we figured it wasn’t all that bad,” said Michael Lyons, senior trader at
Morgan Stanley. “You’re in an environment now where good news is good news,
and bad news is not so bad. It may not be good, but maybe it’s not so bad. We
got through earnings season pretty well with no major damage. Hopefully we’ve
got another half-point rate cut coming into play a couple weeks down the road,
and I think that seems more likely given today’s weak economic numbers.
The leading sectors indexes were the
Amex Biotech Index
(
$BTK.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) up 5.2%, the Securities Broker/Dealer Index
2.7% and the Oil Service Sector Index
(
$OSX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) 2.4%.
The Semiconductor Index
(
$SOX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
gave up 1.3%.  Â
Among the day’s gaining stocks, Dell
(
DELL |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
gained nearly 4% despite reports of a price war with Compaq
(
CPQ |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating). J.D.
Edwards
(
JDEC |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) surged 31% on heavy volume. The software maker said it
expects results for the April 30 quarter to be “significantly better”
than a year earlier. The company also laid off 8% of its workforce.
IDEC Pharmaceuticals
(
IDPH |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
rallied 15% on fast trade.
On the downside, Guidant
(
GDT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
fell 13% on negative analyst comments about the cardiovascular device maker’s
ability to obtain regulatory approval for its newest cardiac device.
Rambus
(
RMBS |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) tumbled 20% after a
federal court ruled against the memory chipmaker in a patent-infringement suit
it filed against rival Infineon
(
IFX |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating). Before the news, trading in Rambus was
halted after tumbling 14.6%.
Handspring
(
HAND |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) fell 10% after
Lehman Brothers downgraded the stock and issued bearish comments about the
hand-held device industry.
Dow winners included: American Express
(
AXP |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) 3.3%, Microsoft
(
MSFT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) 3.2% on heavier than average volume, J.P.
Morgan
(
JPM |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) 3.2%, General Electric
(
GE |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) 2.9%. Citigroup
(
C |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) was the
weakest, down 0.4%.