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Politics : THE VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (4543)	11/30/2003 4:34:18 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6358

Stocks Will Take Cues From Holiday Sales, Data Saturday, November 29, 2003 NEW YORK — Investors will straggle back from a weekend of turkey leftovers and daunting lines at cash registers to a fresh month on Wall Street and more data that points to strengthening economy, analysts say. foxnews.com But any gains in the stock market next week as investors return in full force from the Thanksgiving Day holiday may be tempered by nagging concerns over high share prices and record lows in the dollar. "The valuation of stocks is what is preventing them from going a lot higher at this point," said John Davidson, president and chief executive officer of PartnerRe Asset Management. "There is more confidence around the economy than around stocks." Light volumes marked this week, when the stock market shut on Thursday for Thanksgiving and closed early on Friday. But major market gauges scored hefty gains. The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average (search) raked in a 1.6 percent gain, the tech-stuffed Nasdaq (search) shot up 3.5 percent and the broad Standard & Poor's 500 (search) advanced 2.2 percent. But for the month, it was a mixed bag for the major stock indexes, with the Dow finishing November down 0.2 percent, while the Nasdaq gained 1.5 percent and the S&P 500 added 0.7 percent. For the year, though, the trend is sharply higher. The Dow is up 17 percent, the Nasdaq is up 48 percent and the S&P 500 is up 20 percent so far. A slew of strong data on the U.S. economy helped propel stocks higher this week. And analysts expect reports next week to point to improvements in the job market in November as well as in the nation's manufacturing and services sectors. A hectic weekend of shopping also will grab the limelight next week, as investors search for evidence that consumers are spending heavily this holiday season and helping stoke the economic recovery. "The market has developed an upward bias, and I think it will continue into next week," said Stanley Nabi, managing director at Credit Suisse Asset Management. Americans made their annual day-after-Thanksgiving pilgrimage to the malls Friday for predawn sales offering hefty markdowns. Analysts widely expect this year's holiday season to show a big improvement from last year's weak levels. "You start to enter a seasonally strong period for stocks, and a lot of optimism about the Christmas season," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management. "There will be a lot of focus on how this weekend's sales went, and if those numbers are good." The day after Thanksgiving -- known as Black Friday (search) because it once marked the day when retailers got out of the red -- is the traditional start to the holiday shopping season, which generates as much as 40 percent of annual revenues for key gift destinations such as toy stores and apparel chains. "Between now and Christmas, it's really going to be about how companies individually are doing, in what for many of them is a 'make or break' time of year," Meckler said. The November payrolls number, due on Friday, will be the main event next week. But investors also will eye weekly employment data plus surveys of the manufacturing and services sectors for hints that economic recovery is robust enough to support the big run-up in stock prices this year. "The economic figures that have been coming out have been very comforting and very supportive of a higher market," Nabi said. "We are going to have more good economic news, and I think that will carry the market higher." Non-farm payrolls are expected to have added 135,000 jobs in November, while the U.S. unemployment rate is forecast to remain at 6.0 percent, according to economists polled by Reuters. The report on the latest week of first-time claims for unemployment benefits, due Thursday, is expected to show these claims dipped to 350,000 for the week ended Nov. 29, from 351,000 claims in the previous week. The U.S. labor market has been one area of concern with employment growth lagging in an otherwise rosy economic picture. Expectations are high for the Institute for Supply Management (search) to release healthy manufacturing and services sector indexes, due Monday and Wednesday, respectively -- after data released this week showed factory activity in the Midwest expanded for a seventh straight month. The ISM national index of manufacturing for November is expected to climb to 58.0 from October's 57.0, reflecting an increase in output by U.S. factories, according to economists polled by Reuters. But the ISM national index of non-manufacturing activity, which gauges the output of the U.S. services sector, is expected to inch down to 64.3 in November from October's 64.7, according to a Reuters poll of economists.