Late-Day Rally Trims Losses, Plus, Another Merger

November 17, 2003
Brice Wightman

Stocks fell
Monday — with the Dow down over 138 points
at the lows — until a mid-session rally made up some lost ground. Security concerns in the Middle-East
were blamed, with attacks in Turkey over the weekend and threats of further
car-bomb attacks. The Nikkei sold off hard earlier in the day, down 380 points.
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. Internet was out of favor a second day in a row. The low of
the day on the SPX was right at the 2.0 volatility band; these
bands are posted every day in

TradersWire. Most of today’s volume came in the late-session rally, although
Nasdaq down volume was six times up volume at one point. The Nasdaq bounced at
its 50-day moving average, as it did on 10/24 and 9/30.

We are in the period prior to
mid-quarter updates; some funds are locking in profits near year-end; don’t
forget, we should have some headlines from Comdex in Las Vegas this week, and
Friday is triple witching.

St.
Paul
(
SPC |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) agreed 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.

There were no leading sectors
today — all are in the RED.

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 were +125
at 113 205.

Dollar was +0.17 at
91.61.

Gold was -6.29 at 391.8.

Crude Oil was -0.53 at
31.27

Volume was
1,334,512,000 on
the NYSE, and 1,859,738,000 on the Nasdaq.

Market breadth was negative,
with NYSE issues declining over advancing issues by 2.33 and down volume over up
volume by 4.5; Nasdaq declining over advancing issues at 2.21, and down volume
over up volume at 3.14.

Top Dow stocks were:

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.

Brice
Wightman

bricew@tradingmarkets.com

Late-Day Rally Trims Losses, Plus, Another Merger

BUY THE FEAR, SELL THE GREED

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