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CUBE has wire tidbit:
biz.yahoo.com
Tuesday August 26 1:13 PM EDT
U.S. stocks drift lower in light midday trade
By Huw Jones
NEW YORK, Aug 26 (Reuter) - U.S. stocks drifted lower in light midday
trading amid a lack of interest in the latest batch of economic data as
players looked ahead to the long Labor Day weekend.
``People are anticipating getting into next week, and we are just
dragging along here a little bit,'' said Kenneth Ducey, vice-president,
director of trading at BT Brokerage.
``The market is fairly mixed but still leaning towards the downside.
It's more of a lack of interest than anything else,'' Ducey added.
The Dow tumbled more than 50 points after the opening but quickly pulled
back and largely drifted along in the negative column for the rest of
the morning.
Midday the Dow was off 17.65 points or 0.22 percent at 7841.92, with
Nasdaq down 0.06 percent or 0.91 point at 1600.66.
Analysts said early weakness in stocks was due to lower dollar and bonds
whose mid-morning recovery helped to pare losses on Wall Street.
The long bond was up 7/32 to yield 6.65 percent, while the S&P index
also perked-up, gaining 0.15 point to 923.50.
The Department of Commerce reported that orders for durable goods in
July fell 0.6 percent after an upwardly revised hike of 2.9 percent in
June.
But excluding a 30.3 percent drop in aircraft orders, the overall figure for July rose 0.7 percent.
``This underlying trend is indicative of the economy's strength early in the third quarter, which should put further near-term pressure on the
bond market,'' said Sherry Cooper of Nesbitt Burns.
The National Association of Realtors reported existing home sales rose
2.2 percent in July to an annual rate of 4.24 million. Median sales
prices, meanwhile, rose 4.1 percent from year-ago levels.
Shares of Sybase Inc (SYBS) and Novell Inc (NOVL), the latter most
heavily traded on Nasdaq, rose as traders tried to wade through a web of unsubstantiated takeover rumors about possible tie-ups with
International Business Machines Corp (IBM).
Another technology stock, C-Cube Microsystems (CUBE), was up 2-3/8 at 31-3/8.
On Monday C-Cube unveiled a computer chip that it said was the first
capable of both recording and playing back video in digital format.
On the Big Board the declining issues marginally outpaced the advances.
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