Huh? -- Markets Sour Without Sweet Intel Outlook
Tish Williams
07/14/1999
UPSIDE Today
Copyright (c) 1999 Upside Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Intel didn't give the tech sector the power-lift and jerk that was needed to get the Nasdaq rallying, as the tech-heavy index gained a puny 1.56 to 2779.79 Wednesday morning. The Dow was pinned under the weight of new economic figures and international developments, falling 39.58 to 11135.44.
Big Picture: Argentina stabilized somewhat in Wednesday trading with a 0.24 percent drop after its Monday plummet. Brazil slipped 0.20 percent in sympathy. Hong Kong's Hang Seng took over Latin America's softness with a 2.90 percent drop. Japan's Nikkei continued its strength with a 0.97 gain. In Europe, Germany's DAX climbed 0.67 percent, and the U.K. FTSE crept up 0.32 percent.
Consumer prices slipped 0.1 percent in June, to experts' surprise. It was the first slide in four months. Decliners outweighed advancers on the NYSE, 1,194 to 1,425. On the Nasdaq, 1,765 winners barely topped 1,627 losers.
Damper?: Intel (INTC: +1 1/2, 66 7/8) may not have popped champagne corks Tuesday night after its earnings report included gloomy indicators for margin health, but the chip sector celebrated Wednesday morning nonetheless. Stepping out in style were AMD (AMD: +1/2, 17 9/16), Altera (ALTR: +1 3/16, 45), Applied Materials (AMAT: +2 1/16, 74 9/16), Lam Research (LRCX: +2 1/4, 47) and Novellus (NVLS: +3 1/2, 73 1/16).
Moping by the punch bowl were C-Cube (CUBE: -5/8, 35 7/16), Linear Technology (LLTC: -1/2, 70 7/8), LSI (LSI: -1/2, 47 9/16), fellow earnings deliverer Motorola (MOT: -1 7/8, 94 5/8) and National Semiconductor (NSM: -1/2, 27 1/2).
Mas!: Amazon.com (AMZN: +1 1/2, 127 5/8) rolled out more deals by securing a 49 percent stake in Gear.com to enter the sporting goods market. Onsale (ONSL: -7/8, 21 5/8) merged with Egghead (EGGS: +1/8, 12 3/16) Wednesday morning in a $400 million deal, combining the two B-teamers.
Net bellwethers had a tough morning as big-name losers lined up as follows: Excite@Home (ATHM: -9/16, 49 3/8), (AMTD: -7/16, 36 9/16), AOL (AOL: -15/16, 124 3/16), CNET (CNET: -1 9/32, 48 17/32), CMGI (CMGI: -1 1/8, 112 3/4), EBay (EBAY: -2 7/8, 122 1/8) and E-Trade (EGRP: -15/32, 37 13/32).
Big Boys: As Microsoft (MSFT: -3/4, 92 7/8) enters into the final phases of its Bristol antitrust suit and Intel added confusion to the tech marketplace, bellwethers came up mixed. Dell (DELL: +1/2, 42 3/4), Compaq (CPQ: +1/2, 26 5/8) and Lucent (LU: +3/8, 73 1/16) progressed in morning trading. But Cisco (CSCO: -3/4, 64 1/2), IBM (IBM: -1, 136 7/8), Hewlett-Packard (HWP: -1 3/16, 108 1/8), Sun (SUNW: -7/16, 73 1/16), AT&T (T: -1/2, 56 5/8), Oracle (ORCL: -3/4, 37 15/16) and MCI WorldCom (WCOM: -13/16, 89 1/2) weren't as fortunate.
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