From Briefing.com: 4:20 pm : Market participants responded to a sharp drop by the U.S. dollar with a broad-based buying effort that helped stocks make heady gains and finish at session highs. In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average logged its best closing level in 52 weeks.
News that members of the G-20 and Treasury Secretary Geithner maintain the view that economic stimulus should not yet be withdrawn led to heavy selling against the U.S. dollar and drove the Dollar Index back to 2009 lows. It spent the entire session trading with a loss of roughly 1.0%.
Weakness in the greenback was greeted with a concerted buying effort that gave stocks broad-based gains. Within the S&P 500, 95% of its components logged a gain and gave the broad market index its sixth straight gain. Meanwhile, Kraft (KFT 26.53, -0.25) was the only listing in the 30-member Dow that failed to put together a gain. Its shares were sent lower after the food giant failed to take over Cadbury Schweppes (CBY 50.71, +0.21) with a cash and stock offer that valued the confectioner at some 9.8 billion British pounds.
Strength among diversified banks (+4.3%) and life and health insurers (+4.7%) helped the financial sector finish the session 3.6% higher and overtake materials as the session's best performing sector.
Materials stocks had sported the best gains for most of the session. The sector was helped along by broader market support and interest in basic materials and commodities amid the dollar's decline. The sector finished with a 3.2% gain as buyers showed favor for steel stocks (4.5%) and diversified metals and mining stocks (4.6%).
As for individual commodities, gold prices hit a new all time high of $1111.70 per ounce before pulling back a bit to settle pit trade with a 0.5% gain at $1101.40 per ounce. Meanwhile, buying in crude futures drove oil prices above $80 per barrel, but some momentum was lost so that contracts closed with oil priced at $79.43 per barrel, up 2.6%.
Amid a lack of major earnings announcements and a vacant economic calendar, recaps of the G-20's weekend meeting made up most of the headlines this session. However, health care reform has come back into sharper focus since the House of Representatives passed new health care legislation during the weekend. That turns the focus of industry watchers to the Senate.
Though market participants showed an increased interest in risk by chasing stocks, Treasuries had a reasonably solid session. As such, the benchmark 10-year Note climbed some six ticks. Its gain was solidified after results from a $40 billion auction of 3-year Notes produced a yield of 1.40% and a bid-to-cover ratio of 3.3.
Advancing Sectors: Financials (+3.6%), Materials (+3.2%), Industrials (+2.5%), Telecom (+2.3%), Consumer Discretionary (+2.2%), Tech (+2.2%), Utilities (+1.7%), Health Care (+1.7%), Energy (+1.5%), Consumer Staples (+1.5%)
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +203.52 NASDAQ +41.62 NQ100 +2.2% R2K +2.1% SP400 +2.4% SP500 +23.78 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1860/2.02 bln/812 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2541/1.24 bln/496
6:20PM Cisco prices $5 bln of senior unsecured notes (CSCO) 23.99 +0.17 : Co announced the pricing of three series of senior unsecured notes for an aggregate principal amount of $5 bln. The offering is expected to close on November 17, 2009. Of these notes, $500 mln will mature in November 2014 and will bear interest at an annual rate of 2.90%, $2.5 bln will mature in January 2020 and will bear interest at an annual rate of 4.45%, and $2 bln will mature in January 2040 and will bear interest at an annual rate of 5.50%.
4:58PM Oracle releases statement regarding acquisition of Sun (ORCL) 21.83 +0.41 : "Oracle's acquisition of Sun is essential for competition in the high end server market, for revitalizing Sparc and Solaris and for strengthening the Java development platform. The transaction does not threaten to reduce competition in the slightest, including in the database market. The Commission's Statement of Objections reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics. It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source. The database market is intensely competitive with at least eight strong players, including IBM, Microsoft, Sybase and three distinct open source vendors. Oracle and MySQL are very different database products. There is no basis in European law for objecting to a merger of two among eight firms selling differentiated products. Mergers like this occur regularly and have not been prohibited by United States or European regulators in decades. The U.S. Department of Justice carefully reviewed the proposed acquisition during the normal Hart-Scott-Rodino review and considered it again when the European Commission initiated a second phase review. On both occasions the Justice Department came to the conclusion that there is nothing anticompetitive about the deal, including specifically Oracle's acquisition of the MySQL database product. The U.S. Department of Justice approved the acquisition without conditions and terminated the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act on August 20, 2009. Sun's customers universally support this merger and do not benefit from the continued uncertainty and delay. Oracle plans to vigorously oppose the Commission's Statement of Objections as the evidence against the Commission's position is overwhelming. Given the lack of any credible theory or evidence of competitive harm, we are confident we will ultimately obtain unconditional clearance of the transaction."
4:19PM GT Solar misses by $0.01, beats on revs; co reaffirms FY10 EPS in-line, revs in-line (SOLR) 5.54 +0.30 : Reports Q2 (Sep) earnings of $0.06 per share, $0.01 worse than the First Call consensus of $0.07; revenues fell 25.7% year/year to $104.2 mln vs the $101.8 mln consensus. Co reaffirms in-line guidance for FY10, sees EPS of $0.45-0.60 vs. $0.51 consensus; reaffirms FY10 revs of $450-550 mln vs. $502.69 mln consensus. The co also indicated its overall gross margin for the year is expected to be comparable to its year to date gross margin of ~39%.
2:25PM Emulex files lawsuit to defend itself against alleged anticompetitive conduct by Broadcom (ELX) 10.05 +0.05 : Co announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Broadcom alleging that Broadcom (BRCM) has acted in an anticompetitive manner in violation of federal antitrust laws, as well as made defamatory statements and engaged in acts of unfair competition in violation of seven separate statutes. The antitrust claims seek actual damages, attorneys' fees and costs, and injunctive relief. The complaint also seeks punitive damages against Broadcom to punish and make an example of Broadcom for its alleged "malicious" conduct. Emulex intends to vigorously prosecute this litigation to fully redress Broadcom's conduct and statements, and it is hopeful that Broadcom will immediately cease the conduct alleged in the complaint.
1:59PM Sun Microsystems Earnings Correction: Co beats by $0.17 (JAVA) 8.24 +0.14 : Earlier today, we incorrectly compared the co's results to the Q2 (Dec) consensus. We have deleted the original comment. JAVA actually reported reported a GAAP loss of $0.16 per share which was $0.17 better than the GAAP loss of $0.33 First Call consensus; revenues fell 25% year/year to $2.24 bln vs the $2.34 bln consensus. The co also reported a non-GAAP profit of $0.02 per share.
12:01PM Research In Motion and Adobe Systems expand their collaboration (RIMM) 60.98 +2.26 : The co and Adobe Systems Incorporated (ADBE) expanded their collaboration and announced that professionals and application developers will be able to use the Adobe Flash Platform technology and Adobe Creative Suite content development and authoring tools to create content and application experiences for BlackBerry smartphones. The collaboration aims to accelerate the mobile application and content development workflow between BlackBerry application and web content developers and creative professionals that use Adobe tools.
10:21AM Semiconductors Hldrs Trust tests/pauses near resistance zone at 25.23/25.34 (SMH) 25.18 +0.67 : The SMH has performed well this morning with the recent new session high (25.26) bringing the rally off the early month low to 7.3% to test resistance at a 50/50 level (50% retracement of the Oct-Nov slide and 50 day sma) at 25.23/25.34. Top performers this morning include: INTC +2.4% (tests 38% retrace of Oct-Nov), ADI +2.3%, AMAT +4% (testing 50 day ema), ALTR +2% (testing 50 day ema), AMD +3.5%, AMKR +6.1%, BRCM +4%, KLAC +2.2% (testing 50 day ema), LLTC +2.5%, LSI +3.4%, MXIM +3.1%, NSM +2.6%, NVLS +2.9%, SNDK +3.2%, TXN +2.1% (edges just above two month range top), TER +2.2%, XLNX +2.2% (testing 50 day ema).
Cree (CREE) announces an agreement to purchase a 592,000 square foot facility in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, China. The facility will be Cree's first chip production facility outside of North America and is targeted to also house future components manufacturing expansion... Dell announces that it has entered into Master Services Relationship and Authorized Reseller agreements with Infinite Group...
7:29AM Advanced Semi reports October sales increased 11% YoY to NT$8.9 bln (ASX) 4.24 :
7:28AM United Micro reports October sales increased 17.58% YoY to NT$9.3 bln (UMC) 3.45 : |
