market summary Close Dow +1.69 at 10314.76, S&P +1.90 at 1125.82, Nasdaq +16.07 at 1910.38: It was a bit of a roller coaster day for the market, but a positive bias held for most of the session and translated into modest gains for the S&P 500... The major indices crescendoed into gains of 0.5-1.3% around 12 ET, but slowly gave back most of those in the mid-afternoon trade... Nonetheless, the market made the most out of news that was not entirely favorable...
US Airways (UAIR 1.02 -0.44) filed for bankruptcy - citing the familiar theme of high fuel costs and intense competition - and Hurricane Ivan made its way towards the Gulf Coast after already killing 60 people in the Caribbean... Finally, Broadcom (BRCM 30.30 +2.60) announced that Q3 (Sept) sales would come up short - the latest in a string of semiconductor warnings... The group, somewhat surprisingly, did not retreat but instead rallied following the conference call - concluding demand was no worse than previously expected... Believing an inflection point may be near, semiconductor soared 2.5% and took with it internet, storage, and disk drive...
Biotech, managed care, and oil service (off a 2.5% jump in crude oil prices, to $43.87/bbl, on worries that Hurricane Ivan would disturb US oil production) also performed well... The only notable laggards of the day were utility, tobacco, and banking...SOX +2.5, NYSE Adv/Dec 2034/1291, Nasdaq Adv/Dec 1881/1188
