To: Donald Wennerstrom who wrote (11591 ) 9/12/2003 6:40:20 PM From: Donald Wennerstrom Read Replies (1) | Respond to The following is a pretty nice summation of today's action by Briefing.com.Close Dow +11.79 at 1855.04, Nasdaq +8.95 at 9471.55, S&P +2.21 at 1018.63: [BRIEFING.COM] What looked like a relatively dreary picture through the morning ended up turning into a successful session for the bulls as the major averages, which had spent the entirety of the session underwater, staged a nice recovery in the afternoon and closed in positive territory... But, first things first... The market used this morning's economic data, including the lower-than-expected Retail Sales report (at 0.6% versus consensus of 1.5%; ex-auto at 0.7% versus consensus of 0.8%) and the preliminary September Michigan Sentiment report (at 88.2 versus consensus of 90.4), as an excuse to take some money off the table... As a result, the vast majority of the sectors spent the morning in the red... The Nasdaq was underperforming its blue-chip counterparts on a relative basis due to the weakness in technology sectors, which were taking their cue from the disappointing earnings report from Oracle (ORCL 12.45 -0.53), which checked in with in-line earnings of $0.08 per share, but with lighter-than-expected revenues of $2.07 bln that were accented by a disappointing decline in new license software sales... Nonetheless, the market soon realized that ORCL's issues were largely company-specific and that the market's reaction to the economic data had been overdone... After all, a monthly increase in retail sales of 0.6% is still a healthy one... Also, the correlation between sentiment and spending is relatively weak and the data clearly show that spending continues at a healthy pace... The realization that the consumer remains strong, combined with today's decline in interest rates to their lowest level since the end of July, sparked an afternoon recovery in the equity market, which was spearheaded by the interest-rate-sensitive groups such as the banking, brokerage, and housing sectors... As a matter of fact, the only groups to close in the red were the software, disk drive, internet, defense, and gold sectors, with the latter being the only laggard showing losses surpassing 1%... The bond market closed the session with gains across the yield curve and the 10-year note up +16/32, bringing its yield down to 4.25%... As an aside, volume was relative light, with 1.2 bln and 1.7 bln shares traded on the NYSE and the Nasdaq, respectively... NYSE Adv/Dec 1923/1295... Nasdaq Adv/Dec 1763/1383.>
