Reporting On Wednesday — 3 Names To Watch

Stocks fell
Tuesday on disappointing earnings guidance from two Nasdaq companies.

Both the Dow and the Nasdaq fell to two-month lows. In the worst pre-earnings
week in more than two years, 

Veritas Software

(
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said that it would miss
quarterly results and announced preliminary EPS of 18 cents a share with revenue
in the $470 million range and license revenue at about $268 million, lower than
analysts’ estimates, and
Conexant
(
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fell 42% after it cut its quarterly earnings forecast on weak demand
for wireless LAN products. It now expects revenue to be about $265 million with
EPS of 2 cents.

 

Crude prices jumped to a
one-month high as supply disruptions in Nigeria and Iraq added fuel to the
five-day rally.

 

Second quarter earnings growth
for the S&P is expected to be 25%. As of the end of last week, 83% of the
companies reporting Q2 beat by an average margin of 7.6%.

 

John Kerry picked
John Edwards
to be his vice-presidential running mate.

 

After the close, JDA
Software
[JDAS|JDAS} warned for Q2 and Netopia
(
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guided
below Q3. Corinthian Colleges
(
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said it is closing 10 Canadian
colleges.  Ascential Software
(
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warned for Q2. Tomorrow,
look for earnings from Yahoo! (0.08 estimate) Alcoa (0.47
estimate) and Genentech (0.19 estimate).

 

Dow -66.14 10216.84
S&P 500 -9.90 1115.39
Nasdaq -41.55 1965.10

Strong today were: Energy
(
DXE.X |
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+0.49%, Natural Gas
(
XNG.X |
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+0.89%, Oil Index
(
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+0.46%.

Weak today were: Disk Drives
(
DDX.X |
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-4.19%, Semis
(
SOX.X |
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-3.97%, Networkers
(
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-3.67% and Hardware
(
HWI.X |
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-3.36%.

Economic news release today: a weak ISM services number at 59.5.

10-year Notes were -035 at 110 125

The dollar was -0.04 at 88.20

Gold was -4.70 at 392.20

Crude Oil was +1.21 at 39.60

Volume was 1.28 billion on the NYSE, and 1.94 billion on the Nasdaq.

Market breadth was negative.

 

NYSE Issues
Advancing 1264 Up Vol 284
Declining 2328 Down Vol 988
Ratio 1.84 3.47
Nasdaq
Advancing 784 Up Vol 148
Declining 2327 Down Vol 1760
Ratio 2.96 11.89

 

Stocks in the news:

Lehman Brothers lowered its price target on Intel
(
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to $33 a
share and is upbeat on INTC delivering solid Q2 results.

KVH Industries
(
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fell after it lowered
quarterly revenue forecasts to $14.2 million on lower sales and expects a loss
of $5.1 million.

Micromuse
(
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cut Q3 revenue numbers to $35 million on longer sales
cycles from delayed transactions. The company will report earnings on July 22.

Piper Jaffray raised its price target on Qualcomm
(
QCOM |
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PowerRating)
to $93 a
share on strong growth potential.

Brice Wightman

bricew@tradingmarkets.com

P.S. Sign up for the systems conference call Thursday,
here.