TradingMarkets Mid-Day Movers

  • January 31, 2007
  • Darren Wong

The U.S. stock markets have shown a lack
of direction in morning trading on Wednesday, with the major averages having
difficulty sustaining any significant moves ahead of the announcement of the
Federal Reserve’s latest decision on interest rates.

While the Fed is widely
expected to leave rates unchanged, there is some uncertainty about
what the Fed will say about the outlook for the economy and
interest rates in the accompanying statement.

After seeing some early
weakness, the price of oil has staged a significant turnaround
over the course of morning trading on Wednesday. Crude for March
delivery is currently up $0.72 at $57.69 a barrel after hitting a
low of $55.75 a barrel.

The
price of gold has seen some further upside in morning trading on
Wednesday. Gold for April delivery is currently up $9.10 at
$659.30 an ounce after ending Tuesday’s trading up $1.10 an ounce.

Stocks in
Motion

Boeing
(
BA |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) Q4 Profit More Than
Doubles On Strong Commercial Airplanes Revenues; Lifts FY07 EPS View, Trims
Revenue Forecast; Guides FY08 (full
story).  BA shares jump 4.4%.

SanDisk
(
SNDK |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) Slips To Loss In
Q4 Hurt By Acquisition Costs, Adj. Profit Rises 43% On 55% Jump In Revenues,
Sees Weaker Margins In Q1 (full
story).  SNDK shares drop 6%.

Eastman Kodak
(
EK |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) Emerges From
The Darkroom In Q4 (full
story).  EK shares rise by 1%.

Nymex
(
NMX |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) Q4 Profit Doubles As
Electronic Trading Grows (full
story).  NMX shares fall by 1.6%.

Allstate
(
ALL |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) Q4 Profit Rises
16.5%, Operating EPS Misses Estimate; Shares Fall (full
story).  ALL shares drop 5.3%.

Time Warner
(
TWX |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) Q4 Profit Up
34% On Asset Sales, Tax Benefit, Revenue Up 8%; Sees FY07 EPS Of $1.00 (full
story).  TWX shares lose 0.5%.

For more stories as they happen, go to our
Breaking News section.

Market Snapshot

Dow

 +32.61 12,555.92

NASDAQ

 +0.14 2,448.78

S&P 500

 +0.72 1,429.54

 

 NYSE NASDAQ

Volume

 1,088,591,000 848,431,000

Advances

 1472 1195

Declines

 1598 1632

Up Volume

 474 378

Down Volume

 474 398

New Highs

 141 98

New Lows

 15 32


Strongest/Weakest Sectors

Strongest Sectors

Weakest Sectors
Nasdaq Transportation Index (TRANX) Amex Airline Index (XAL)
Amex Gold Bugs Index (HUI) Amex Disk Drive Index (DDX)
S&P Retail Index (RLX) Amex Networking Index (NWX)

Economic
News

The E.I.A. reports that crude
oil inventories had a build of 2.684 mln barrels


Chicago PMI 48.8 vs 52.0 consensus, prior 51.6

GDP-adv 3.5% vs 3.0% consensus, 2.0% prior

Chain Deflator-adv +1.5% vs +1.5% consensus, prior 1.9%

Employment Cost Index 0.8% vs 0.9% consensus

Darren Wong

Associate Editor

darrenw@tradingmarkets.com