At Midday, We Bounced At This Level
Stocks are
trading much lower as the Dow fell over
100 points amid security concerns in the Middle-East. Today’s market opened with
an announcement that chipmaker AMD
(
AMD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) and Sun Microsystems
(
SUNW |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) will form a partnership to make inroads to the server area with a
CPU called Opteron. The SPX bounced right at the 1.5 volatility band; these
bands are posted every day in
TradersWire.
A major merger involved St.
Paul
(
SPC |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) agreeing to acquire Traveler’s Property Casualty for $16
billion. Together, they will create the second-biggest U.S. insurer measured by
market value. Holders of Travelers’ common stock will each receive 0.4334 of a
St. Paul share for each Travelers share held. The combined company will be
called St. Paul Travelers.
The Dow Jones Industrial
Average
(
$INDU.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) is down 1.05% at 9664.74. The S&P 500
(
$SPX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
is down 1.11% at 1038.21. The Nasdaq
(
$COMPQ |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) is down 1.67% at
1896.20.
There are no leading sectors
today — all are in the RED.
Weak today are Disk Drive
[DDX.X|DDX.X] -3.46%, GSTI Multimedia
Networking
(
$GIP.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), -3.13% and Airline Index
(
$XAL.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating),
-2.97%.
Economic news releases for
today included Business Inventory levels, up 0.3%. The NY Empire State index
rose to 41.00. The Treasury Budget figure was not available at the time this
article was written.
10-year Notes are +150
at 113 230.
Dollar is +0.24 at
91.84.
Gold is -0.83 at 389.70.
Crude Oil is -0.60 at
31.77.
Volume is 596,000,000 on
the NYSE, and 894,000,000 on the Nasdaq.
Market breadth is negative,
with NYSE issues declining over advancing issues by 1.07 and volume down over up
by 9.81; Nasdaq issues declining over advancing issues at 3.81, and down volume
over up volume at 5.49.
Top Dow stocks are:
Boeing [BA|BA]
+1.35% at 39.78, Du Pont |DD|DD]
+0.07% at 40.22, Allied Capital [ALD|ALD]
-0.23% at 25.42, and Alcoa
(
AA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) -0.33% at 32.22
Stocks in the news:
Microsoft
(
MSFT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) reported plans to introduce a
music-downloading service next year. Their financial might and Windows dominance
may give them the edge to compete with providers like Napster, iTunes and
Wal-Mart.
Toys "R" Us
(
TOY |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) posted a
higher-than-expected loss due to lower toy and apparel sales. The toy store
division experienced in a 3% decrease in sales while overall sales rose 2.2% to
$2.32 billion. The company lost $38 million for the quarter and also reported
plans to close 182 stores.
Lowes
(
LOW |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) reported a 33% rise in
third-quarter profit as it earned $452 million on $7.92 billion of revenue. Lowes
also raised its fourth-quarter earnings forecast to 48 cents and expects sales
to rise 18%.
Dupont
(
DD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) is reported to have sold
its clothing and carpet fiber business to Koch Industries for $4.4 billion in
cash.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley
(
MWD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
agreed to pay a $50 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange
Commission involving the mutual fund scandal.
If you have any comments or questions, please
feel free to email me.
bricew@tradingmarkets.com