Market Takes An Early Holiday
The red-hot Nasdaq finally took a breather today, pulling back in a move most felt was long overdue as traders appeared to take profits home ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. The Nasdaq has become over bought, setting record highs every trading day in November and rising as many as 700 points from its October 18th low. The broad market stumbled as well.
For the day, the Nasdaq finished down 49.69 at 3342.87, the Dow fell 93.89 to 10,995.63 and the S&P 500 dropped 16.24 to 1404.70.
At The BellIndexCloseChangeS&P 5001404.70-16.24NASDAQ3342.87-49.69Dow10995.63-93.89
Among the blue chip Nasdaq stocks to give back some of their recent gains were Oracle [ORCL>ORCL], down 3 15/16 (5%) to 73 1/2, Intel [INTC>INTC], down 1 1/2 to 79, and Dell [DELL>DELL], down 1/2 to 41 1/4. But the move in the big cap techs wasn’t all downhill as Cisco [CSCO>CSCO] rose 1 to 88 1/2 on an upgrade from Paine Webber.
Figure 1. Dow Jones Industrials (INDU), five-minute bar. Source: Quote.com.
Tech also took a hit on the Dow, but Coke [KO>KO] bucked today’s downdraft, adding 1 1/4 to 66 5/8 to close at a five-month high on an upgrade from Lehman Brothers.
Selected Internet stocks showed resilience today, with eBay [EBAY>EBAY] rallying 13 1/4 to 167 9/16 on news of the company’s launch of ten regional Web sites to augment its auctioning operation. Likewise, the newly split America Online [AOL>AOL] added 2 13/16 to finish at a new all-time closing high of 84 1/2.
The market largely ignored a weaker-than-expected durable goods report from the Commerce Department but airlines [$XAL.X>$XAL.X] took notice of a $0.63 drop in the price of a barrel of oil today. American [AMR>AMR], United [UAL>UAL], Alaska [ALK>ALK], US Airways [U>U] and Delta [DAL>DAL] all rose more than 3%.
From the Proprietary Momentum List, Electronic Arts [ERTS>ERTS] rose 10 3/4 to 119 for a two-day gain of 29%. Electronic Arts, the world’s largest developer of video games, benefited after inking a deal with AOL on Monday to be their exclusive supplier of video games.
Companies that provide technology that speeds data encoded in light waves along fiber optic cables performed well today. JDS Uniphase [JDSU>JDSU], and its recent acquisition target Optical Coating [OCLI>OCLI] (both from Mark Boucher’s Trading Watch List), shot up 10 5/16 and 9 3/8, respectively. Last Friday, investment funds of George Soros were also widely reported to have purchased more than 440,000 shares of JDS Uniphase.