Here is the commentary on the stock ticker close from Briefing.com
<Close Dow +113.48 at 9659.13, Nasdaq +26.45 at 1909.55, S&P +13.61 at 1039.58: [BRIEFING.COM] The late-afternoon rally that has marked recent sessions came early - very early, at about 10 ET - and only gained steam as the day drew on... As a result, the Dow and S&P 500 set new 52-week highs, and the Nasdaq lifted to a 15-month high and closed above the psychologically-important 1,900 level... The Composite was, in fact, the best performing index - up 1.4% - and its leadership was particularly striking in the face of an August semiconductor equipment book-to-bill ratio that missed most Wall Street forecasts... As a result, the semi equipment group was the only tech sub sector to turn negative for the day... Internet, software, networking, and disk drive were among the standouts, along with a whole slew of industry groups from the broader market... Transportation, cyclicals, utility, homebuilding, and financial exhibited relative strength and led the charge higher... The latter group put up the largest gains thanks to a blow-out Q3 (Aug) report from Bear Stearns (BSC 76.27 +3.80)... Other factors other than strong industry leadership that laid the groundwork for the advance were the winning session in bonds - which helped push yields back to their mid-July levels and enhance the investment appeal of stocks in the process - and the quadruple witching options expiration that marks tomorrow's session... Economic data played a rather insignificant role in the trading action as most of it checked in mix... August Leading Indicators met the consensus estimate of 0.4%, while jobless claims for the week of September 13 dropped 29K to 399K (consensus of 410K)... The four-week moving average, however, rose to 411K from 409K... Finally, the Philadelphia Fed Index missed the consensus estimate of 17.0 (at 14.6), but a spike in the key new orders component to its highest level since November of 1999 suggested manufacturing remained NYSE Adv/Dec 2146/1072... Nasdaq Adv/Dec 1962/1217.>
While the semi-equips might have been down for the day, the loss was minimal. The Group of 25 that I report on weekly was down 3+ points for the day or -0.71 percent. TER and NVLS, 2 of the 18 stocks in the SOX, were up 1.7 and 0.2 percent respectively while AMAT and KLAC were down 1.6 and 1.1 percent respectively. |
