From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : Continued lack of leadership caused stocks to struggle in the face of resistance, which ultimately gave way to a technical breakdown that resulted in steep losses for the major averages.
Sellers hit stocks at the open. The major averages fought back some, but their efforts lacked leadership. That hampered the broad market and kept it from poking into positive territory. Most notably, though, a barrage of selling was brought about by the inability of the S&P 500 to push back above a rising trendline that formed the bottom of a triangle pattern and a simultaneous pullback by the euro.
The slide stabilized once the S&P 500 found the 1210 zone, setting a near one-month low, but stocks never really rebounded from there. The euro also drifted into the close, resulting in only a fractional gain for the day. It is on pace for a 2% weekly loss.
Participation picked up in response to the market's volatility. In recent session's share volume has been anemic, but today it approached 1 billion on the Big Board.
Market movement distracted participants from a dose of generally pleasing data, which featured the latest weekly initial jobless claims count. Initial jobless claims for the week ended November 12 totaled 388,000. Not only is that less than the 398,000 initial claims that had been broadly expected, it marked the lowest initial claims level since April.
Housing starts in October hit an annualized rate of 628,000, which is little changed from the downwardly revised rate of 630,000 units in the prior month, but greater than the pace of 604,000 that had been generally expected. Building permits set an annualized pace of 653,000 to exceed the rate of 603,000 that had been anticipated. Building permits in the prior month had trended at an annualized pace of 589,000.
The Philadelphia Fed Survey for November slipped to 3.6 from 8.7 in the prior month. Many had expected to ease to just 7.5.
Advancing Sectors: (None)
Declining Sectors: Telecom -0.5%, Consumer Staples -0.5%, Utilities -0.6%, Health Care -1.2%, Consumer Discretionary -1.7%, Industrials -1.8%, Financials -2.1%, Energy -2.1%, Tech -2.2%, Materials -2.9%DJ30 -134.86 NASDAQ -51.62 NQ100 -2.3% R2K -1.5% SP400 -1.9% SP500 -20.78 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 710/2.21 bln/1787 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 577/983 mln/2445
5:01PM Agilent appoints Ron Nersesian as Chief Operating Officer (A) 37.21 -1.37 : Co announced that Ron Nersesian has been appointed executive vice president and chief operating officer, effective immediately. Nersesian has been president of Agilent's largest business, the Electronic Measurement Group (EMG), since 2009.
4:25PM Entegris CEO exercises stock options (ENTG) 8.50 -0.31 : Co announces Gideon Argov, president and chief executive officer, exercised and sold in a cashless transaction on the open market 625,500 options at a strike price of $8.35 per option, which were granted to him on November 21, 2004 and which were due to expire on November 21, 2011. Mr. Argov used the net proceeds of that transaction, together with additional personal cash, to then exercise and hold 50,000 options at a strike price of $1.13 per option granted to him on February 10, 2009 and to pay taxes related to that exercise. Following these transactions, Mr. Argov holds approximately 686,350 shares of Entegris stock.
4:06PM Marvell beats by $0.01, beats on revs (MRVL) 13.78 -0.90 : Reports Q3 (Oct) earnings of $0.40 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.01 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.39; revenues fell 1.0% year/year to $950 mln vs the $940.08 mln consensus. Non-GAAP gross margin for the third quarter of fiscal 2012 was 56.8 percent, compared to 58.1 percent for the second quarter of fiscal 2012 and 59.5 percent for the third quarter of fiscal 2011. "We are pleased with our third quarter results as we demonstrated solid growth in the quarter driven by our Mobile and Wireless end market, which grew over 20% sequentially. Our TD mobile phone platforms have been extremely well received by customers..."
9:08AM Cree's Ruud Lighting and Carmanah marketing agreement discontinued (CREE) 29.35 : The exclusive marketing agreement will discontinue as of the expiration of the current agreement on November 6, 2011. This agreement was established in May, 2008 and effectively paired Carmanah stand-alone solar power engines with Ruud Lighting's specification-grade BetaLED exterior LED luminaires. While Carmanah intends to work with Ruud on a non-exclusive basis in continuing to offer these luminaires, the company also recognizes that other world class luminaires will complement its proprietary solar power engines. The expiration of the agreement between Carmanah and Ruud Lighting is an evolution of our relationship and provides both companies the flexibility to explore other opportunities to continue to develop and supply innovative solar powered outdoor lighting products as the adoption of this technology continues to grow.
FSI International (FSII) announced that it received a follow-on order for its ORION Single Wafer Cleaning System from a leading semiconductor producer.
Microsemi (MSCC) announced that its facility in Manila, Philippines now complies with rigorous AS9100 Rev C quality system requirements for aviation, space and defense markets.
First Solar (FSLR) announced cumulative production has reached 5 gigawatts or 66 million solar modules, capable of generating enough clean electricity to power ~2.5 mln homes.
NetApp (NTAP $36.56 -4.16) reported second quarter earnings of $0.63 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.04 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.59, while revenues rose 20.5% year/year to $1.51 billion versus the $1.53 billion consensus. The company issued downside guidance for the third quarter with EPS of $0.56-0.60, excluding non-recurring items, versus the $0.63 consensus and revenues of $1.52-1.61 billion versus the $1.63 billion consensus. "NetApp produced record non-GAAP earnings per share in the second quarter. In aggregate, we saw strong revenue growth across most areas of our business, offset by some unexpected weakness in a handful of our largest accounts."
Applied Materials (AMAT $11.90 -0.57) reported fourth quarter earnings of $0.21 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.01 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.20, while revenues fell 24.4% year/year to $2.18 billion versus the $2.15 billion consensus. The company issued downside guidance for the first quarter with EPS of $0.08-0.16, excluding non-recurring items, versus the $0.18 consensus and revenues of -5 to -15% QoQ to approximately $1.85-2.07 billion versus the $2.07 bln consensus.
10:59 am A Dip, but Not a Dive, in the Philadelphia Fed Index
The Philadelphia Fed's Business Outlook Index fell from 8.7 in October to 3.6 in November. The Briefing.com consensus expected the index to fall to 7.5.
Both unfilled orders and new orders weakened. The new orders index barely remained in an expansion cycle as the index fell from 7.8 in October to 1.3 in November. Unfilled orders contracted in November as the index declined from 3.4 in October to -1.5.
The lack of growth in orders put downward pressure on shipments as the index dropped from 13.6 to 7.3. Conversely, the number of employees index increased from 1.4 in October to 12.0 in November, suggesting perhaps that manufacturers do not expect the drop in demand to last long.
If businesses were worried about the long-term outlook, employment would not have strengthened nearly as much and most likely would have contracted.
10:57 am S&P Tech Sector Down Modestly, Underperforming the S&P 500
The tech sector is trading lower today, trailing slight losses in the broader market. Semiconductors are showing relative weakness in the tech space with the Philly Semi Index trading 1.8% lower. AMAT (-5.7%) and MRVL (-4.6%) are the notable laggards in the chip index. Among other major indices, the S&P 500 is trading 0.1% lower, while the NASDAQ is trading 0.3% lower and the QQQ is trading 0.6% lower on the session. Among tech bellwethers, VZ (+0.9%) and IBM (+0.9%) are showing relative strength, while INTC (-0.5%) and MSFT (-0.5%) are underperformers.
In earnings last night, NTAP (-12.2%) reported a mixed Q2 and guided Q3 below consensus, while AMAT (-5.7%) posted a Q4 beat and downside guidance. Elsewhere, Chinese companies YOKU (-19.3%) reported a mixed qtr with downside guidance and QIHU (+5.6%) posted a beat with upside guidance.
Among notable analyst upgrades this morning, Oppenheimer upgraded MU (-1.9%) to Outperform, HOLI (+8.6%) was upgraded to Overweight at Piper Jaffray, and Brigantine upgraded RIMM (-1.4%) to Buy. Also, AMT (+1.1%) was added to the Conviction Buy List at Goldman.
In downgrades, RMBS (+14.1%) was downgraded to Neutral at JPMorgan, DGIT (-10.1%) was downgraded to Underweight at Piper Jaffray, MRVL (-4.8%) was downgraded to Underperform at JMP Securities, and Collins Stewart and Raymond James downgraded NTAP (-12.2%). |
