You Know What Stocks Are Hurt By The Mad Cow Scare — Here’s One That Benefits From It
Stocks finished lower on light
pre-holiday trading. A case of mad cow
disease was discovered in the state of Washington. The Department of Agriculture
predicted it would be isolated to a small number of cases. Shares of restaurant
that serve beef-related products declined. McDonalds
(
MCD |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) and
Wendy’s
(
WEN |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) both traded 5% lower. Bio-Rad Laboratories
(
BIO |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
was upgraded by Robert Baird to “outperform.” The company manufactures 50%-60%
of BSE testing kits. Cattle futures implemented a limit down rule to prevent a
sharp drop in price.
AT&T
(
T |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
plans to freeze management salaries until 2005 in an attempt to reduce costs.
Dow | -32.81 |
10305.19 |
S&P 500 | -1.98 | 1994.04 |
Nasdaq | -5.55 | 1969.23 |
The day’s leading sectors were
Oil Service Sector [OSX.X|OSX.X]
+1.72%, Energy
(
DXE.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) +1.26%,
Amex Gold Bugs [HUI.X|HUI.X] +1.20%, Oil
(
XOI.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) +1.02%,
Weak today were Airlines
(
XAL.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) -0.79%, and Disk drives
(
DDX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) -0.45%.
Economic news releases included
Durable goods orders that fell 3.1% and jobless claims that
fell by 1,000 to 353,000. New home sales also fell 2.4% to 1.082 million units.
10-year Notes were +225
at 112 205
The dollar
was -0.48 at 87.89
Gold was +1.20 at 412.80
Crude Oil was -0.69 at
33.02
Volume was 515,000,000
on the NYSE, and 635,000,000 on the Nasdaq.
Market breadth was mixed.
NYSE | Issues | |
Advancing | 1597 | Up Vol 223 |
Declining | 1485 | Down Vol 279 |
Ratio | 1.07 | 1.25 |
Nasdaq | ||
Advancing | 1375 | Up Vol 278 |
Declining | 1616 | Down Vol 347 |
Ratio | 1.21 | 1.25 |
Top Dow stocks were:
GM
(
GM |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +2.63% at 53.35,
American Express
(
AXP |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) +0.41% at 47.88, Merck [MRK|MRK],
+0.37% at 44.94, and Johnson & Johnson [JNJ|JNJ],
+0.35% at 50.73
Stocks in the news:
Micron Techonology
(
MU |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) reported
earnings of $1.1 million, from $1.11 billion sales for the first quarter of
2004.
California Amplifier
(
CAMP |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) posted
third-quarter income of $3.5 million on revenue of $44.2 million. The company
said it would acquire Vytek for $76.8 million. The acquisition is expected to
diversify its customer base and improve its engineering capability
General Motors
(
GM |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) received an upgrade
from UBS which said it favored GM over Ford. Both GM and Ford
(
F |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) are trading
at 52-week highs.
Home health services provider Gentiva
(
GTIV |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)
raised its earnings outlook for 2004 to 57 to 63 cents per share, and said
revenue would reach $850 million.
bricew@tradingmarkets.com