From Briefing.com: Weekly Recap - Week ending 07-Jan-11Strong gains on Monday to begin the new year helped U.S. equity markets rally this week.
Monday's rally benefitted from the seasonality effect of new funds being put to work on the first day of the month, but strength in overseas trading, a rally in financials after Bank of America (BAC) put more of its public mortgage repurchase claims behind it, and continued momentum buying were also reasons.
Seven of the 10 S&P sectors rose, led by IT (+2.7%), Health Care (+1.8%) and Financials (+1.7%). The latter was in focus again Friday, this time selling off following negative headlines regarding a foreclosure case in Massachusetts, but managed to rebound somewhat.
The economic focus this week was on the employment sector. Wednesday's record ADP Employment figure of 297,000 raised estimates for Friday's Nonfarm Payroll number, but it came in at a weaker-than-expected 103,000 on private payrolls of 113,000.
Upward revisions to Nonfarm Payrolls in October and November, however, created an offset of sorts that tempered some of the headline disappointment. At the same time, December's report followed a familiar form as the labor market is recovering, but not at a fast enough pace for the Federal Reserve to take its foot off of the quantitative easing pedal.
Retailers were also in focus this week, releasing same-store sales figures for December. While 14 of the 25 companies Briefing.com covers missed expectations, meaning growth slowed in December, a weather disruption at the end of the month played a part. An argument could also be made that expectations were inflated following a very strong November, and December still capped off a relatively strong Christmas shopping season.
Looking ahead to next week, the economic calendar includes the Federal Reserve's regional Beige Book economic survey on Tuesday, Retail Sales and Industrial Production on Friday, and PPI/CPI data on both Thursday and Friday. The next round of Treasury auctions will also take place with $66 bln in 3-, 10- and 30-year Notes and Bonds for sale.
While the "unofficial" beginning to fourth quarter earnings reporting season is on Monday with Alcoa's (AA) release, the only big names for the week are Intel (INTC) on Thursday and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) on Friday. The calendar will really pick up the following week.
Index Started Week Ended Week Change % Change YTD %
DJIA 11577.51 11674.76 97.25 0.8 0.8
Nasdaq 2652.87 2703.17 50.30 1.9 1.9
S&P 500 1257.64 1271.50 13.86 1.1 1.1
Russell 2000 783.67 787.83 4.16 0.5 0.5
1:13PM Applied Materials promotes Omkaram Nalamasu to chief technology officer effective Jan 24 (AMAT) 13.86 -0.03 : Mark Pinto, Applied's CTO since 2004, will remain executive vice president and general manager for the company's Energy and Environmental Solutions (EES) and Display groups.
9:20AM GT Solar receives first order for new DSS650 Multicrystalline Ingot Growth Systems from South Korean PV manufacturer Nexolon (SOLR) 9.95 : Co announces it has received the first order for its new DSS650 multicrystalline ingot growth system from Korea-based PV manufacturer Nexolon. The value of the contract totals $37.5 mln and will be included in co's backlog for its current Q4 FY11, which ends on April 2, 2011.
9:16AM Integrated Silicon lowers Q4 guidance below consensus (ISSI) 8.84 : Co has lowered its Q4 guidace; co now sees Q4 EPS of $0.25-0.30 from $0.30-0.36 previously, vs. the $0.33 consensus; rev to $65.5-67.0 mln from $68-72 mln vs. the $68.8 mln consensus. Co experienced weaker than expected end market demand, primarily for its DRAM products. "We previously expected revenue in the December quarter to decline sequentially as some of our end markets are experiencing an inventory correction. However, end market demand for DRAM, particularly in the consumer electronics markets in Asia, has been slightly weaker than we anticipated. We believe that this inventory correction is nearly complete."
8:30AM First Solar acquires RayTracker Inc. (FSLR) 134.53 : Co announces that it has acquired RayTracker, Inc., a tracking technology and photovoltaic balance-of-systems firm that is an operating company of Idealab, a creator and operator of technology companies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Atmel Corporation (ATML) announced that it has achieved ZigBee Certified status for the Atmel Key Remote Controller based on the ZigBee Remote Control standard and the ATmega128RFA1 single-chip wireless device microcontroller.
Entropic Communications (ENTR) and Marvell (MRVL) announced their collaboration to accelerate the development of a new class of industry first MoCA 2.0 enabled consumer electronics and customer premise equipment designed to allow service providers to distribute virtually. |
