Look At This Consumer Credit Number
Stocks fell
Friday despite a positive jobs report.
The Labor Department said the US economy
added 126,000 non-farm payroll jobs in October. This was more than double the
number expected. The unemployment rate declined to 6%, while the number of hours
worked in the economy rose to 0.4%, the highest since January. The Senate today is debating on
turning a temporary moratorium on taxes on Internet access into a permanent ban.
Halliburton reached an agreement to limit a proposed asbestos cash
settlement to $2.75 billion.
Consumer credit rose $15.1B
higher — almost three times consensus — due in large part to the pace of
August auto sales.
The Dow Jones Industrial
Average
(
$INDU.X |
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PowerRating) fell 47.18 at 9809.79. The S&P 500
(
$SPX.X |
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PowerRating)
lost down 4.84 at 1053.21. The Nasdaq
(
$COMPQ |
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PowerRating) slid 5.63 at
1970.74.
The day’s leading sectors were
Gold and Silver Sector Index
(
$XAU.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +2.58%.Dow Jones Internet Commerce Index
(
$ECM.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), 1.37%, GSTI
Services Index
(
$GSV.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +1.15%, Morgan Stanley Hlth Provider
(
$RXH.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +0.55%.
Weak today were Disk Drive
Index
(
DDX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) -1.86%, Insurance
(
$IUX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), -1.49% and Computer Technology
(
$XCI.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating),
-1.01%.
Economic news releases for
today included Hourly Earnings numbers 0.1%, non-farm Payrolls increased to a
whopping 126K, average workweek at at 33.8. Unemployment rate down to 6.0%,
Wholesale inventories rose 0.4% and the consumer credit number was not available
at the time this article was written.
10-year Notes were -085
at 111 085.
The dollar
was -0.87 at 93.02.
Gold was +0.07 at 381.40.
Crude Oil was +0.46 at
30.72.
Volume was
1,410,333,000 on
the NYSE, and 1,937,973,000 on the Nasdaq.
Market breadth was mixed,
with NYSE advancing issues over declining issues by 1.18 and up over down volume
by 1.01; Nasdaq issues advancing over declining issues at 1.001, and down volume
over up volume at 1.12.
Top Dow stocks were:
Altria
(
MO |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) +4.67% at 49.51, Alcoa [AA|AA],
+2.42% at 32.97, and Eastman Kodak [EK|EK],
+1.70% at 25.00.
Stocks in the news:
Ameritrade
(
AMTD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
announced plans to acquire privately held brokerage firm Bidwell, which has
100,000 accounts with $5 billion in assets. For its own online brokerage
service, AMTD added 32,000 new customers in October. AMTD gained 4% to 12.81..
McDonalds
(
MCD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
reported an 8% jump in same-store sales for the month of October. Sales were
up 15% compared to the previous year. The company attributed the strong results
to Justin Timberlake’s “I’m lovin’ it” song and its Monopoly game promotion.
WebMD
(
HLTH |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) posted
a net profit of $6.1 million or 2 cents per share up from $4.5 million a year
ago. Revenue was up $23 million to $250.6 million.
Nvidia
(
NVDA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) third-quarter sales rose
13% amid an industry slump of chip sales. Net income was at $6.4 million on
revenue of $486 million. It makes chips for Microsoft’s XBox, that accounted
for 25% of overall sales. NVDA also raise 2004 revenue expectations to $780
million. NVDA closed up almost 20%, at 21.75.
If you have any comments or questions, please
feel free to email me.
bricew@tradingmarkets.com