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From Briefing.com: 4:10 pm : The stock market ended the Wednesday session on an upbeat note despite enduring a shaky start. The S&P 500 spiked 1.8% with the bulk of the gain coming after the release of the FOMC minutes from the September meeting.

Equity indices began the day near their flat lines following another reminder about slowing global growth. To that point, China's HSBC Services PMI slipped to 53.5 from 54.1 (expected 53.8), but remained above 50.0, which marks the difference between expansion and contraction.

The first half of the session saw a brief dip into the red that was fueled by weakness in the energy sector. At its lowest level, the group was down near 2.0% with crude oil exerting pressure on the sector. Crude fell 1.3% to $87.67/bbl, while the sector ended with a solid gain (+1.0%) after the FOMC minutes sparked an afternoon rally that likely featured a short-covering component.

Most notably, the minutes acknowledged that growth concerns overseas could have an impact on the U.S. through a strengthening dollar, which would lead to a decline in inflation expectations. This was viewed as an indication that the Fed would not rush to raise the fed funds rate, but instead maintain its accommodative policy stance. Treasuries spiked from lows to new highs in response (10-yr yield -3 bps to 2.31%) while the Dollar Index (85.27, -0.40) slumped to a two-week low.

The dovish-sounding statement was accompanied by yet another reminder that economic data would serve as the driving force behind future policy changes. That being said, the overall tenor of the key passages suggests the Fed isn't convinced recent progress toward its objectives can be sustained.

Accordingly, the prospects of continued easy-money policy resulted in a broad-based rally with high-beta groups leading the way. Chipmakers soared with Intel (INTC 34.27, +0.80) climbing 2.4%, while the broader PHLX Semiconductor Index gained 2.3% to narrow this week's loss to 0.5%. For its part, the technology sector (+2.0%) ended the day ahead of the remaining cyclical groups. Germany-based business software developer SAP (SAP 69.21, -1.20) bucked the trend, falling 1.7% amid speculation the company will implement a hiring freeze until 2015.

Elsewhere among cyclical sectors, industrials settled in-line with the market, but that concealed the underperformance of transport stocks. The Dow Jones Transportation Average gained 1.0%, but despite today's advance, the bellwether complex remains down 2.7% since last Friday versus no change for the S&P 500.

On the countercyclical side, the telecom services sector (+0.1%) edged into the green just before the close, while consumer staples (+1.4%), health care (+2.5%), and utilities (+2.2%) posted stronger gains.

The staples sector received a measure of support from Costco (COST 128.73, +3.46), which reported better than expected results. As for health care, the sector received help from biotechnology with the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB 274.13, +7.51) surging 2.8%.

Today's session invited above-average participation with roughly 900 million shares changing hands at the NYSE floor.

Economic data released this morning was limited to the weekly MBA Mortgage Index, which rose 3.8% to follow last week's downtick of 0.2%.

Tomorrow, weekly Initial Claims (Briefing.com consensus 295K) will be released at 8:30 ET, while the Wholesale Inventories report for August (consensus 0.3%) will cross the wires at 10:00 ET.


Nasdaq Composite +7.0% YTD
S&P 500 +6.5% YTD
Dow Jones Industrial Average +2.5% YTD
Russell 2000 -5.8% YTD

DJ30 +274.83 NASDAQ +83.39 SP500 +33.79 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 2002/2.15 bln/801 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2500/900.1 mln/613 3:30 pm :

Gold traded higher overnight, broke down in a big way this morning, but has since fully recovered, now higher by 0.6% and back in the upper band of this week's trading range.
Silver continues to probe support levels near $17, trading lower throughout much of the session, but the metal, mirroring the move in gold, is now higher by 0.75%.
Crude oil tanked today, now trading down 1.7% to $87.32/barrel, following inventory data that showed inventories had a build of 5.015 mln vs consensus for a build of 1.5-2.0 mln (see 10:30 comment for details). Oil is creating fresh lows on the daily chart, trading down and testing lows from the week of 4/17/13.
Natural gas also had a rough session, falling 2.45% to $3.86; the LoD was $3.837/MMB, a new 10-day low.

4:31 pm Exar expects SepQ revenue to be at or above high end of prior guidance (EXAR) : Co says it now expects 2Q15 (Sep) revenue to be at or above the high-end of its prior guidance of $40-43 mln. Current CapIQ consensus is $41.7 mln.

"Throughout the quarter our target markets remained strong and we now expect revenue at or above the high-end of our prior outlook.""Additionally, the accelerated pace of the iML integration and the completion of a restructuring of our workforce has allowed us to achieve meaningful synergies and operating efficiencies. Coupled with a revaluation of certain fixed and intangible assets we expect annualized savings of approximately $6.5 million. These savings will positively impact our manufacturing overhead, general and administrative costs as well as research and development expenses." Co will report full Q2 results on Nov 5.

4:16 pm Advanced Micro appoints Dr. Lisa Su as President & CEO (AMD) : Co announced that its board of directors has appointed Dr. Lisa Su as president and chief executive officer and member of the board of directors, effective immediately. Dr. Su succeeds Rory Read, who has stepped down as president and chief executive officer, and member of the board of directors, as part of a transition plan. Read will support the transition in an advisory role, remaining with the company through the end of 2014.

4:08 pm Alcoa beats by $0.09, beats on revs; reaffirms FY14 aluminum demand growth +7% (AA) : Reports Q3 (Sep) earnings of $0.31 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.09 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.22; revenues rose 8.2% year/year to $6.24 bln vs the $5.84 bln consensus.

Engineered Products and Solutions delivers highest after-tax operating income in history of $209 million, 18th consecutive quarter of year-over-year after-tax operating income improvement; new record adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.5% Global Rolled Products after-tax operating income up 30% sequentially, 45% higher year-over-year Upstream business improves performance for 12th consecutive quarter; highest Primary Metals segment adjusted EBITDA per metric ton since second quarter 2008. Global aluminum demand growth forecast of 7% in 2014 reaffirmed.

Alcoa continues to project 2014 global aerospace sales growth of 8 to 9 percent driven by robust demand for both large commercial aircraft and regional jets.The Company tightened its projection for 2014 global automotive production growth from a previous range of 1 to 4% in the second quarter to 2 to 4 percent.Global packaging sales growth of 2 to 3% and global building and construction sales growth of 4 to 6% in 2014 remain unchanged. In the industrial gas turbine market, the co's projected decline of 8 to 12 percent, on lower orders for new gas turbines and spare parts, also remains unchanged for the year. For the second time this year, Alcoa increased its 2014 estimate of production growth for the North America commercial transportation market to a range of 16 to 20 percent from a previous range of 10 to 14% in the second quarter, and 5 to 9% in the first quarter. The higher estimate is based in part on a 43 percent increase in third quarter truck orders year-over-year and strong backlogs. Globally, Alcoa continues to expect a flat commercial transportation market of negative 1 to positive 3% in 2014 due to ongoing weakness in the European market.

1:42 pm Stocks/ETFs that traded to new 52 week highs/lows this session- New lows (77) outpacing new highs (5) (:SCANX) : Stocks that traded to 52 week highs: AGN, CFN, COST, DUK, GMCR

Stocks that traded to 52 week lows: ABB, ABX, AFL, AGCO, ALLY, ALU, ARCC, ARCP, ASNA, AU, AUY, AVP, BHP, BTU, CA, CBI, CCJ, CHK, CIE, COG, CREE, DAR, DDD, DE, DNOW, DNR, EMR, ESV, F, FLR, FMC, FMER, FNFG, FULT, GM, GPOR, GSK, HOG, KBR, KGC, KING, KOS, LINE, LNCO, LPI, LUK, MBT, MRC, MT, MUR, NE, NGD, OAS, OC, OCN, OII, ORI, PE, PGH, PWE, RDC, RIG, RRC, SD, SDRL, SLW, SWN, TCK, TEX, TLM, UBS, UTX, VIAB, VIP, WDR, YOKU, ZNGA

ETFs that traded to 52 week highs: TLT

ETFs that traded to 52 week lows: OIL, PBW, REMX, SIL, SLX, TBT, UGA, UHN, URA, VGK, XES, XME, XOP

Note: To reduce the list of stocks making 52 week highs/lows to a manageable size we have filtered out stocks below $2 bln in market cap and below 1 mln average volume. Without this filter 20 stocks made 52 week highs and 573 stocks made 52 week lows.

1:32 pm Plug Power says zero percent manufacturing tax will help support industrial operations in New York (PLUG) : The co welcomed New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to its corporate headquarters in Latham, New York. During this milestone visit, Governor Cuomo toured the manufacturing facility and then told workers and executives of the dramatic positive impact he expects from the recent 0% manufacturing tax for operations in the State of New York. This is positive news for growing companies, like Plug Power, who are competing worldwide.

"We are happy to have welcomed Governor Cuomo to Plug Power for the first time, and appreciate his tremendous support for manufacturing operations in New York State," said Andy Marsh, CEO at Plug Power Inc. "Governor Cuomo's business development focus is having a positive influence on the growth of manufacturers, state-wide."

12:19 pm Notable movers of interest (:SCANX) : The following are some of today's most notable movers of interest, categorized by market capitalization (large cap over $10 billion and mid cap between $2-10 billion) and ranked by % change (all stocks over 100K average daily volume).

Large Cap Gainers

COST (127.96 +2.15%): Reported better than expected results, beat by $0.06, revs in-line; reported Sep comps of +4% vs +5.6% Retail Metrics consensus.
DTE (78.86 +2.39%): Strength in utility companies as oil continues its decline (ED & DUK also higher).
NEE (94.67 +1.77%): Joint venture with EQT Corp (EQT) announced it secured 2Bcf per day of firm capacity commitments at 20-year terms for the Mountain Valley Pipeline project.

Large Cap Losers

WFT (18.01 -7.02%): Continued weakness in oil & gas companies and oil moves down to 18-month lows (HAL & LNG also lower).
GPRO (90.75 -3.3%): Downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Jaffray; tgt maintained at $90.
SAP (68.12 -3.25%): Report out suggesting job freeze until 2015.

Mid Cap Gainers

GEF (44.5 +3.49%): Upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo.
DRH (12.84 +2.31%): Provided outlook in slide presentation at investor conference: sees Q3 RevPAR growth of 17%+.
PKY (18.81 +2.34%): Announced agreement to sell portfolio of 19 office buildings for $237 million.

Mid Cap Losers
SHLD (25.59 -15.54%): Reports out a vendor is withholding shipments.
JCP (8.22 -10.61%): At analyst day co sees comp guidance for Q3 below expectations to low single digits versus prior of mid single digits.
SAVE (58.19 -8.39%): Co sees Q3 adjusted operating margin in lower half of previous guidance range.

Analog Devices (ADI) introduced the industry's highest speed, high--temperature, 16-bit, A/D converter, which is more than twice as fast as currently available converters and provides error-free operation at temperatures of up to 175 degrees Celsius.

Freescale Semiconductor (FSL) announced that its 28-nm QorIQ T1 family multicore communications processors are the first embedded System on Chips to demonstrate interoperability with the newly unveiled Aquantia AQrate 2.5 and 5 Gbps Ethernet PHY products.

8:32 am O2Micro lowers Q3 revenue guidance to ~$15 mln vs $17.3 mln Capital IQ Consensus Est, down from $16.5-18.3 mln; reaffirms gross margin guidance at 50-52% (OIIM) :

The reduction in anticipated revenue for Q3 is primarily the result of ongoing weakness in demand at several notebook customers, coupled with a product issue in our charger IC product line.Co believes the soft demand in its business, which caused the reduction in guidance, is the result of continued weak demand by several of our major notebook customers.Co also experienced a product issue in our charger IC product line for notebooks. Co believes that it has resolved this issue and it expects the co's charger IC business will remain weak for several quarters. Co is confident it will garner new design wins in its notebook customers' next design cycle.During this difficult period of revenue weakness, the co will consider expense reduction measures.

Texas Instruments (TXN) expanded its successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter portfolio with the first devices in a new high-voltage family.

Xilinx (XLNX) announced major advances in productivity for Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoCs with the Vivado Design Suite 2014.3, the programmable industry's only SoC-strength design suite, SDK, and new UltraFast Embedded Design Methodology Guide.

Tuesday was a trend-down day for the major indices. Wednesday was for a time in the early-going, but then it soon became a trend-up day when the S&P futures held support at the 1918 level. Things turned higher at that point, yet they went into overdrive following the release of the minutes for the September 16-17 FOMC meeting that proved to be less hawkish-sounding than a growing number of participants had feared.

What ensued with the 2:00 p.m. ET release was a broad-based rally that was exacerbated by short-covering activity.

The gains were significant in many instances as the stock market found a measure of comfort in the thought that the Fed still sounded like it is not in a hurry to raise the fed funds rate or to project a hawkish-sounding image.

The Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500, and Russell 2000, which were down 56, 30, 10, and 11 points around 11:00 a.m. ET finished up 275, 83, 34, and 21 points, respectively, reclaiming everything that was lost on Tuesday and then some.

The S&P 500 information technology sector was one of the strongest performers of the day, jumping 2.0% with all but one component -- Juniper Networks (JNPR 21.20, -0.09) -- registering a gain. Recall that all 66 sector components ended with a loss on Tuesday.

The overhang for Juniper Networks was an MKM Partners downgrade to Neutral from Buy that was tied in part to secular and competitive concerns.

Just about every other component was riding high, gaining at least 1.0%. Cisco (CSCO 24.66, +0.02) was a laggard, adding just 0.1% in the wake of Business Insider report discussing a "massive reorganization" affecting up to 25,000 employees. The report, which highlighted a shake-up in Cisco's core routing and switching business, was attributed to "sources in the Valley."

On a related note, German software giant SAP (SAP 69.21, -1.20) came under pressure amid media reports the company is freezing hiring until 2015 to reduce costs. Bloomberg shared that news, attributing it to Boerse Online which cited an email from SAP's CFO to managers in its reporting.

Given the broad-based, and sizable, gains on Wednesday, most developments with a negative hue were overlooked as bargain-hunting efforts took over.

To wit, Qualcomm (QCOM 75.19, +1.68) didn't trade off the news that RBC Capital Markets lowered its price target to $85 from $88 so much as it traded off the news that FBR Capital raised its price target to $83 from $81

Western Digital (WDC 95.66, +2.35) even managed to climb 2.5% after reporting it lost a court ruling in Minnesota and will have to pay Seagate Technology (STX 57.08, +1.81) a final arbitration award of $630.4 million. The offset was the news that WDC had recorded an accrual of $758 million for this matter as of June 27, 2014.

In other developments, security software company Symantec (SYMC 24.01, +0.82) was said to be considering splitting up its security and storage units; EMC Corp. (EMC 28.82, +0.69) was also discussed as a potential breakup candidate after Elliott Management sent a letter to the company's Board of Directors claiming the company's current structure obscures enormous value

It sounds like letter writing is becoming increasingly popular these days. In mid-afternoon action, Carl Icahn said he is planning to send a letter on Thursday to Apple's (AAPL 100.80, +2.05)Tim Cook and that he believes "it will be interesting." That helped prop up the sector's largest component, which also sent out an invitation to an October 16 "event."

Finally, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which has been among the worst-performing indexes of late, increased 2.3% after being down 0.9% in early action. Applied Materials (AMAT 21.15, +0.78), which was upgraded by Credit Agricole to Outperform from Underperform, had a hand in that strong showing.