Big Week For IPOs, Including These Names

Stocks are higher as M&A leads the way on Monday.
An oversold market provided an
early bid as did beginning-of-the-month new money.  Mixed economic reports
did little to add to the gains, though. Construction spending for March rose
0.5%, a record. The ISM, however, was 53.3 for April–lower than expected–vs.
55.2 in March.

Warburg Pincus and Texas Pacific Group are near a deal to buy Neiman
Marcus

(
NMGA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
for $5 billion, or $100/share.

American  Int’l Group
(
AIG |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
will restate 4 years of results.

UBS downgraded Merrill Lynch
(
MER |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
, Goldman
(
GS |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
and
other brokers.

OSI Pharma
(
OSIP |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
and Genentech’s
(
DNA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
will be in
focus after Tarceva showed positive results with chemotherapy.

Newspaper stocks (Tribune
(
TRB |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
, Gannett
(
GCI |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
are in
focus today as a report by The Audit Bureau of Circulations is expected to show
an industry-wide decrease of between 1% – 3%

For April, the Dow fell 3%; the S&P 500 lost 2%. The Nasdaq lost 4% and
has been down for four straight months. Here is the performance for selected
stocks in April:  EBAY -15%; AAPL -14%; SUNW -10%; DELL -9%; ORCL -8%.

The SEC approved a pilot program that will allow traders to short on a
downtick.

Merrill Lynch upgraded Internets and wireless.

The FOMC meets tomorrow.

Eleven IPOs are scheduled for this week, including Lazard LLC and
Morningstar
(MORN), which will be a Dutch auction. Chinese software company
Watchdata (WDAT) cut its offering price from $18-$20 to $14-$15. 
Twenty Chinese companies are expected to go public this year and be listed on
the Nasdaq.

Strong sectors are:   Insurance
(
$IUX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
+2.23% 
Computer Hardware

(
$HWI.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
+1.15%  Disk Drives
(
$DDX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)

+0.88%

Weak sectors are:   Brokers
(
$XBD.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
-2.43%  
Gold
(
$XAU.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
-0.43%  Airlines
(
$XAL.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)

-0.17%

Dow +37.17 10,229.68
Nasdaq +2.88 1924.53
S&P 500 +1.85 1158.70

The dollar is +0.15 at
84.58

Crude Oil is -0.17 at
49.55

Gold is -3.80 at 428.90

ce=”Arial” size=”2″ face=”Arial”>Volume is 763 million on the NYSE and
635 million on the Nasdaq.

Market breadth is positive.

NYSE Issues
Advancing 1849 Up Vol 431
Declining 1203 Down Vol 248
1.53 1.73
Nasdaq
Advancing 1483 Up Vol 334
Declining 1372 Down Vol 247
1.08 1.35

Stocks in the News

Sysco
(
SYY |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
beat by a penny.

Tyson
(
TSN |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
beat, but lowered the high end of guidance.

OSI Pharma
(
OSIP |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
and Genentech’s
(
DNA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
will be in
focus after Tarceva showed positive results with chemotherapy.

Wal Mart same store sales grew just under 1%

Avon
(
AVPA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
beat estimates and raised estimates.Q1 profit rose
16%.

Brice Wightman