If You Blinked, You Missed This Milestone
Stocks were
mixed Wednesday, with the Nasdaq briefly hitting 2000
for the first time in 22 months. But if you blinked,
you missed it, as a nasty afternoon sell-off sent the index closing at the low
of the day. The all-time high on the Nasdaq was March 2000, at 5132, with the
low at 1,108 in October 2002. The SPX reached
an 18-month high of 1074 intraday, while the Dow reached a 17-month high of
9,942.
The Labor
Department released a much higher revised third-quarter non-farm productivity
number of 9.4%, the strongest growth in 20 years. The ISM non-manufacturing
index fell to a disappointing 60.1%. The dollar continued its slide against the
euro, down to $1.2125. The SEC proposed that funds stop accepting orders at 4PM
EST.
Wal-Mart
(
WMT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) announced it
will stop taking MasterCard debit cards to due the provision that transactions
require a signature. Transaction fees are lower for pin-based transactions than
ones involving a signature.
| Dow | +19.78 | 9873.42 |
| S&P 500 | -1.89 | 1064.73 |
| Nasdaq | -19.82 | 1960.25 |
The day’s leading sectors were
Chemicals
(
CEX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) +1.03%, Brokers
(
$XBD.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
+0.58%, Software
(
GSO.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) +0.29%, Pharmaceuticals
(
$DRG.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating),
+0.24%, and Healthcare
(
$HCX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +0.09%.
Weak today were Disk Drives
(
DDX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) -3.68%, Internet [OSX.X|OSX.X] -3.05%, and
Airlines [XAU.X|XAU.X] -2.78%.
Economic news releases included
revised productivity numbers that came in at 9.4%, ISM services at 60.1.
The dollar
was -0.21 at 89.43.
Gold was +0.64 at
404.02.
Crude Oil was +0.30 at
31.10.
Volume was
1,418,349,000 on
the NYSE, and 2,232,831,000 on the Nasdaq.
Market breadth was negative.
| NYSE | Issues | |
| Advancing | 1518 | Up Vol 609 |
| Declining | 1749 | Down Vol 783 |
| Ratio | 1.15 | 1.28 |
| Nasdaq | ||
| Advancing | 1141 | Up Vol 934 |
| Declining | 2073 | Down Vol 1228 |
| Ratio | 1.81 | 1.31 |
Stocks in the news:
Slumping drugmaker Merck
(
MRK |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) said it expects to earn $3.11 to $3.17 per share next year. Wall
Street analysts were relieved that Merck did not guide lower for lack of new
blockbuster drugs. Merck reiterated its October 2003 forecast and MRK is
bouncing back from 52-week lows.
General Motors
(
GM |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
hit a 52-week high after announcing its pension plan is recovering and may help
2004 earnings. Auto sales for GM were up 22% at 363,000 vehicles.
Oracle
(
ORCL |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
received an upgrade from UBS to “buy” as analysts cited a more favorable
environment for application software vendors. Bank of America also raised
Oracle’s second-quarter earnings and license and total revenue estimates.
Wendy’s
(
WEN |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) raised
its 2003 earnings outlook on very strong sales. November same-store sales rose
9.4%. It projected full year fiscal earnings to be $2.01 to $2.04 a share, up
from $1.97 a share.
bricew@tradingmarkets.com