Tech Futures Rock To Broadband

Pundits’ prognostications and a high profile acquisition
brought Wall Street’s and La Salle Street’s wallet out Tuesday to spark the biggest rally in the
Nasdaq 100 and Nasdaq 100 futures since July. Positive comments by analysts on
Intel, Texas Instruments, and Advanced Micro Devices (temporarily) erased chip stocks off the
blacklist and jolted the semiconductor index
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up 8%. In a vote of
confidence for the future expansion of broadband, Sun Microsystems said it would
buy Colbalt
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for $2 billion, expanding Sun’s penetration into the
low-end of the server market.

On the Nasdaq 100 Index, the soon-to-be-merged duo of JDS
Uniphase and SDI Inc., were the silent power behind the rally, with gains of
over 10% each. Their powerful moves, along with Intel, Qualcomm, Oracle, and
Sun Micro’s, backed one of the best moves of the summer that brought the Nasdaq 100 futures
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back from
a 10-day, 14% slide to finish 144.50 higher at 3802.00. 

December S&P futures
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also rallied, adding
11.20 to 1478.50. 

Dow futures
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fell on warnings that earnings would be hurt by rising
oil and falling earnings in components Alcoa and International Paper. Their
decline helped the DJZ0 make good in its Implosion-5 List
signal for a net loss of 35.0 to 10,928.0.

One way you could have gotten in on Tuesday’s rally in
the Naz futures was through a pullback.
Self-fulfilling or real, Fibonacci retracement levels, at times, work. The
accompanying chart shows how the 38% retracement of Monday’s low to high rally
served as a good place to get long on a pullback this morning. (Note: the 38%
level, like all Fib ratios, are derived by dividing the Fib
numbers–1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,etc.–by themselves, in this case 8/21 or
34/89). 

December T-bonds
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responded to lower crude oil
prices and came back from a three-day loss that had clipped two full points:
The Dec. contact closed 7/32 higher at 98 3/32.

Traders cashed in longs
ahead of the weekly American Petroleum Institute (API) report on national
stockpiles. Crude oil
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fell .45 to 35.10, but natural gas
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,
from the
Momentum-5
List
, rallied to a new all-time high, adding .086 to 5.480.

Also from the Momentum-5
List
, dollar index futures inched a new contract high, closing up .02 to
115.84 on renewed enthusiasm for US equities and doubt that the European Central
Bank will raise interest rates.

In the meats, pork bellies tumbled ahead of a report that showed only about one-third as much product as forecast moved out of storage, implying supply is much larger than thought and increasing. Analysts had estimated 1 million pounds, while only 330,000 pounds of bellies moved out of Chicago Mercantile Exchange storage facilities. January pork bellies
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fell 1.600 to 61.575 and, since the report came out after the close, there could be additional downside here.