From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : Volatility continued today, but this time stocks swung to their best single-session percentage gain in more than two years.
A near 7% drop during the prior session's trade -- the worst one-day rout since December 2008 -- was initially followed by bargain hunting today. Although the market's opening gain was challenged, stocks were able to regroup and climb sharply.
Gains were tested again later in the day, when the FOMC issued its latest Policy Statement. The FOMC announced today that it will keep the Fed Funds Rate at 0.00% to 0.25%, as had been broadly anticipated. However, the Committee changed its verbiage about keeping rates at exceptionally low levels for an extended period to a pledge to keep rates exceptionally low at least through mid-2013. That pledge is likely because the Committee now expects a somewhat slower pace of recovery over coming quarters.
Many participants had expected the Committee to comment on the market's recent volatility and any new threats to the global economic recovery, as implied by the US debt downgrade issued by analysts at S&P, but the Fed's failure to address those matters prompted many participants to exit their positions so as to take profits or hedge against further volatility.
As selling gained momentum, the S&P 500 actually fell to a loss of more than 1% after it had been up in excess of 2% around midday. Treasuries rallied amid the action, causing yields on several issues to fall to record lows. Even the yield on the benchmark 10-year Note dropped to a record low of 2.03%, which is less than the approximate 2.2% dividend yield currently offered by the S&P 500.
Just as stocks threatened to break down again, the S&P 500 was able to attract support in the 1100 zone. It then climbed aggressively into the close, resulting in a 6% swing from its session low to its closing high. The net gain of 4.7% made for the S&P 500's best single-session percentage spike since a 7% surge in March 2009.
Strong market breadth helped advancing share volume on the NYSE surpass 2 billion, which is more than double the total share volume tally that had been regularly averaged on the NYSE up until only one week ago.
The buying effort helped drop the Volatility Index, which is often euphemistically dubbed the Fear Gauge, back down to 35 for a 27% loss. In the prior session it had surged to 48 for the first time since May 2010.
While buying interest was both strong and broad, participants favored financials the most. The sector surged to a 8.2% gain after it had been slammed for a 10% loss yesterday. Consumer staples stocks, considered to be defensive in nature, made up the only sector that gained less than 3%.
Advancing Sectors: Consumer Staples +2.2%, Utilities +3.2%, Health Care +3.8%, Telecom +4.4%, Tech +4.6%, Industrials +4.6%, Energy +4.6%, Consumer Discretionary +4.8%, Materials +5.9%, Financials +8.2%
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +429.92 NASDAQ +124.83 NQ100 +4.9% R2K +6.9% SP400 +6.4% SP500 +53.07 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 2214/3.80 bln/456 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2899/2.41 bln/250
4:25PM Diodes reports EPS in-line, misses on revs; guides Q3 revs below consensus (DIOD) 19.78 +1.66 : Reports Q2 (Jun) earnings of $0.43 per share, excluding non-recurring items, in-line with the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate consensus of $0.43; revenues rose 13.8% year/year to $169.8 mln vs the $173.5 mln consensus. Co issues downside guidance for Q3, sees Q3 revs of $160-170 mln vs. $181.87 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. "Beginning in May, we started to see a slowdown in the global markets, in particular the consumer and computing space. This weakness accelerated in the last several weeks of the quarter affecting several of our customers that build product for the U.S. and European markets. Gross margin in Q2 was also impacted by the softening demand, which caused us to change our mix to lower margin commodity products to support revenue. Additionally, there was a slower than expected ramp in productivity due to the training requirements for replacing operators as a result of the previously announced China labor shortages. We expect this productivity issue to be resolved by the end of the third quarter. We have taken several actions, including the delay of capital investments and the freezing of manufacturing manpower, until such time that the demand environment improves."
4:12PM Amtech Systems beats by $0.04, beats on revs; guides Q4 revs below consensus; reaffirms FY11 revs guidance (ASYS) 16.56 +0.38 : Reports Q3 (Jun) earnings of $0.74 per share, $0.04 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.70; revenues rose 66.8% year/year to $71.9 mln vs the $66.1 mln consensus. Co issues downside guidance for Q4, sees Q4 revs of $53-56 mln vs. $60.48 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. Operating margins in the fourth quarter are expected to be negatively impacted by: (i) lower shipment volumes; (ii) expected higher material costs; and (iii) substantially higher research and development costs resulting from the Company's solar development programs, including its solar ion implant project. Co reaffirms guidance for FY11, sees FY11 revs of $240-243 mln vs. $241.57 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
4:12PM Pericom Semi beats by $0.06, beats on revs; guides Q1 revs below consensus (PSEM) 7.44 +0.65 : Reports Q4 (Jun) earnings of $0.14 per share, $0.06 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.08; revenues rose 9.3% year/year to $43.3 mln vs the $42.5 mln consensus. Co issues downside guidance for Q1, sees Q1 revs of $38-$41.5 mln vs. $44.25 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. Co states, "The overall macro environment has been weak the past few months and we have seen a slowdown in demand. Q4's book-to-bill ratio was slightly less than 1:1, which resulted in lower backlog entering fiscal Q1 2012 than the prior sequential quarter."
4:10PM Sunpower reports EPS in-line, revs in-line; guides Q3 EPS below consensus, revs in-line; guides FY11 EPS in-line, revs above consensus (SPWRA) 16.23 +0.73 : Reports Q2 (Jun) loss of $0.19 per share, excluding non-recurring items, in-line with the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate consensus of ($0.19); revenues rose 54.2% year/year to $592.3 mln vs the $592 mln consensus. Co issues guidance for Q3, sees EPS of $0.05-0.15, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.17 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees Q3 revs of $700-750 mln vs. $731.35 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. Co issues guidance for FY11, sees EPS of $0.75-1.25, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.79 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY11 revs of $2.80-2.95 bln vs. $2.74 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
4:08PM Action Semiconductor announces CFO transition (ACTS) 1.89 +0.02 : Co announced that Mr. Nigel Liu has been promoted to CFO, effective September 1, 2011. Mr. Liu will replace Ms. Patricia Chou, who has resigned as CFO, effective August 31, 2011. Mr. Liu has over 13 years of accounting and finance experience and has been with Actions Semiconductor since 2007.
4:05PM Cree beats by $0.01, beats on revs; guides Q1 EPS below consensus, revs in-line (CREE) 29.49 +2.84 : Reports Q4 (Jun) earnings of $0.28 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.01 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.27; revenues fell 8.1% year/year to $243.1 mln vs the $233.8 mln consensus; non-GAAP gross margin of 38.8% vs 40% guidance Co issues guidance for Q1, sees EPS of $0.25-0.28, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.31 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees Q1 revs of $245-255 mln vs. $252.98 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. "As we look ahead to Q1, demand has improved from earlier in the calendar year and we are well positioned to continue to lead the LED lighting rev
Conexant Systems, Inc announced that its soft modem technology has been integrated into new devices in Atmel Corporation's (ATML) SAM9 ARM926-based family of microcontrollers.
Seagate (STX) has shipped its one millionth solid state hybrid drive for laptop PCs after launching the product, Momentus XT in spring 2010. Major computer makers including Alienware, ASUS, Dell (DELL), Sony (SNE) and Toshiba (TOSBF) now offer laptops powered by the 2.5-inch drive that blends performance rivaling solid state drives with the enormous capacity and much lower cost of hard disk drives.
Silicon Image (SIMG) announced that Toshiba's (TOSBF) new 2011 line of REGZA digital televisions, the Z2 series and ZP2 series for the Japanese market, will feature Silicon Image's patent-pending InstaPort S single-second port switching technology.
LSI Corporation (LSI) announced LSI MegaRAID CacheCade Pro 2.0 read/write caching software for select LSI MegaRAID 6Gb/s SATA+SAS controller cards.
AMD (AMD) announced the latest industry-leading application to support open-source Bullet Physics and OpenCL industry standards. Through its collaboration with AMD, Autodesk has incorporated a new Bullet Physics plug-in, based on OpenCL standards, into the Autodesk Maya 2012 software Subscription Advantage Pack.
2:23AM United Micro reports net sales for July of NT$8.81 bln, down 18.5% YoY, down 4.1% sequentially (UMC) 1.89 :
09:22 am Corning upgraded to Neutral at Ticonderoga: . Ticonderoga upgrades GLW to Neutral from Sell; Corning's stock has already fallen by nearly 31% this year vs. an 11% decline in the S&P 500. They continue to believe Corning will struggle with the secular slowdown in the LCD glass market and they are still unable to find the next big growth driver that will replace the display business. However, the stock is approaching tangible book value and they believe the easy money on the short side has been made. |
