From Briefing.com: Weekly Recap - Week ending 01-Apr-11The S&P 500 continued its rally, advancing 1.4% on the week amid broad-based gains. The stock market's resilience is underpinned by the fundamental forces of low interest rates, low inflation, strong earnings, healthy corporate balance sheets, and accommodative Fed policy, which have helped expose the relative value of U.S. equities versus the Treasury market and other stock markets.
The advance this week sent the S&P 600 SmallCap Index past its prerecession high (also a lifetime high), joining the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 400 MidCap Index.
Nine of the 10 sectors advanced, with all nine rising at least 1%. The tech sector underperformed, down 0.1%.
Telecom led the way, spiking 4.2% as AT&T (T) gained as investors continued to evaluate the impact of the merger agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile.
In other M&A news, Nasdaq OMX (NDAQ) rallied 9.3% after teaming up with IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) to make an $11.3 billion rival bid for NYSE Euronext (NYX). The value of the potential deal is 19% above Deutsche Boerse's offer.
The focal point in terms of economic data this week was the March employment report. Most aspects of the report were encouraging. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 216,000 (Briefing.com consensus 185,000) while private sector payrolls jumped 230,000 (Briefing.com consensus 203,000). Nonfarm payrolls for January and February were revised slightly higher, too.
One striking feature of the nonfarm payrolls gain is that it was fairly broad-based, led by a 78,000 increase in professional and business services, a 45,000 increase in education and health services, a 37,000 increase in leisure and hospitality, and a 17,000 increase in manufacturing.
The unemployment rate ticked down to 8.8% from 8.9%.
In commodity trading, crude oil gained 2.0% while gold advanced 0.2%. The dollar index fell 0.4%.
The 10-year Treasury yield was largely unchanged from the prior week.
Index Started Week Ended Week Change % Change YTD %
DJIA 12220.59 12376.72 156.13 1.3 6.9
Nasdaq 2743.06 2789.60 46.54 1.7 5.2
S&P 500 1313.80 1332.41 18.61 1.4 5.9
Russell 2000 823.85 846.77 22.92 2.8 8.1
4:56PM Research In Motion executive adopts automatic securities disposition plan (RIMM) 56.08 -0.46 :
4:50PM GSI Technology sued by Cypress Semiconductor (GSIT) 8.91 -0.18 : Co announced that on March 30, 2011, Cypress Semiconductor (CY) filed suit against GSI in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Cypress' complaint alleges five counts of patent infringement, principally related to GSI's SigmaQuadTM and SigmaDDRTM products. GSI has not yet been formally served in this matter. The Company has begun an investigation of Cypress' claims and intends to defend the lawsuit vigorously.
8:06AM MIPS Tech addresses certain matters regarding Android anti-fragmentation efforts in Q&A (MIPS) 10.49 : Co's Vice President of Marketing and Business Development in Q&A regarding how Google's (GOOG) anti-fragmentation initiatives for Android code impact providers of microprocessor architectures such as MIPS and INTC. Click here to read the Q&A. |
