Accidental Earnings Shocker

Stocks were
slightly lower Thursday.
The day started
off on a negative note with Dow component Wal-Mart
(
WMT |
Quote |
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PowerRating)
missing
third-quarter earnings by a penny. Weekly
jobless claims rose by 13,000 to 366K while the US trading deficit rose to $41.3
billion. The White House Council of Economic Advisers noted that the deficit is
a concern and it hopes to cut it in half over the next five years. Gold prices
rose to a 7-year high at the $398.00 mark. Home prices also rose at least 10%
from a year ago in 41 of the 124 areas, with Southern California leading the way
at >25%.

Scheduled to report after the
close, Dell
(
DELL |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
accidentally released the report at 3:20 PM ET,
reporting .26/share, in line with $10.6B revenues vs $10.6 estimates. The
company also said shipments for Q4 will be up +80% sequentially.

The Dow Jones Industrial
Average

(
$INDU.X |
Quote |
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PowerRating)
fell 10.69 at 9837.94. The S&P 500
(
$SPX.X |
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PowerRating)

is down -0.12 at 1058.41. The Nasdaq
(
$COMPQ |
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PowerRating)
slid 5.76 at
1967.35.

The day’s leading sectors are
Pharmaceutical Index
(
$DRG.X |
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Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
, 2.77%, S&P Healthcare
(
$HCX.X |
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Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
,
+2.59%, Morgan Stanley Hlth Care
(
$HMO.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
, +2.30%, Oil Service
Sector Index

(
$OSX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
, +2.59%. and Biotech Index
(
$BTK.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
,
+2.24%.

Weak today are Retail [RLX.X|RLX.X]
-1.16%,
Semiconductor Sector Index
(
$SOX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
,
-1.00% and Networking
(
$NWX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
, -0.96%.

Economic news releases for
today included export prices that showed a 0.1% increase, while import prices
dropped 0.1%. Initial claims rose to 366K. The US Trade deficit balance also
rose to $41.3 billion.

10-year Notes were +104
at 112 205.

The dollar
was -.70 at 91.61.

Gold was +0.13 at
394.44.

Crude Oil was +.59 at
31.43.

Volume was
1,365,188,000
on the NYSE, and
1,861,654,000 on the Nasdaq.

Top Dow stocks were:

Merck
(
MRK |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
,
+1.55 at 45.80, Boeing [BA|BA
],
+0.83 at 39.90, Johnson and Johnson [JNJ|JNJ
],
+0.84 at 50.34, and Alcoa
(
AA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
, +.42 at 33.13.

Stocks in the news:

Officemax
(
OMX |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)

reported a 46% increase in net income on $1.29 billion of sales. Net income came
in at $24.1 million, beating Wall Street expectations. OMX is trading at its
52-week high of $9.

LSI logic
(
LSI |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
is
trading higher after announcing plans to spin off its storage
systems unit. The company’s board of directors has approved the spin-off and
expects an IPO in the first half of 2004.

Clothing retailer
Urban Outfitters
(
URBN |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
third-quarter net rose
by 76% on $142.3 million of sales. It expanded the number of stores by 23% and
same-store sales increased by 17%.

Applied
Materials

(
AMAT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
reported fourth-quarter net profits of $15 million on
revenues of $1.22 billion. For the fiscal year, it lost $149 million on $4.32
billion of sales.

Friday, look
for

If you have any comments or questions, please
feel free to email me.

Brice
Wightman

bricew@tradingmarkets.com