Nice Trade On GOOG

Stocks are higher
on quadruple witch Friday

on an upbeat outlook from Ford
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and a Texas Instruments
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stock buyback.

The semiconductor book to bill ratio came in at
1.00 in August from 1.04.  The SOX up 9% in the last week and a half
touching 50 MA  down 31% from highs in January. RBC downgraded the sector
to neutral on valuation.

The University of Michigan sentiment index edged
lower at 95.8; the consensus was 96.5.

Nice perk. Search firm Heidrick & Struggles and
some top execs sold 1.2 million shares of Google
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recently.
The firm received rights to buy GOOG shares at 0.30 as part of a recruiting job
done for Google in 2001. The profit? $128.8 million.

The indices are basically flat for the week, but
sectors making new highs are oils, services, transports and  utilities.

Dow +37.91 10226.73
S&P 500 +4.05 1124.42
Nasdaq +10.46 1906.98

Strong today are: Oil
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+1.47%, Biotech
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+1.37%, Semis
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+1.07%.

Weak are: Healthcare
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-0.89%, Brokers
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-0.89%.

10-year Notes are -070 at 112 270

The dollar
is +0.16 at 88.95

Gold is +1.20 at 405.20

Crude Oil is +1.03 at 44.95

Volume is 726 million on
the NYSE and 913 million on the Nasdaq.

Market breadth is positive.

NYSE Issues
Advancing 1703 Up Vol 422
Declining 1425 Down Vol 252
Ratio 1.19 1.67
Nasdaq
Advancing 1391 Up Vol 542
Declining 1414 Down Vol 321
Ratio 1.01 1.68

Stocks in the News

Ford
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raised its Q3 and 2004 estimates, and will cut 1500 jobs at
its Jaguar plant in Britain. The company now sees 1.90 – 2.10.

Texas Instruments
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will buy back $1 billion in stock and
boosted its quarterly dividend to 0.10.

3COM
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had a slightly narrower loss and guided higher for
the current quarter.

Circuit City
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reported 0.06, beating estimates.

Knight Ridder
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guided lower, citing lower ad revenue at the Miami
Herald due to the hurricanes.

Cisco
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was downgraded at Lehman.

Anheuser Busch
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was downgraded to hold at Deutsche Bank.

Qualcomm
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is raising guidance for Q4 and said it may change
the way it accounts for royalties, which may adversely affect revenues.

Carnival
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beat by 0.03.

Brice Wightman