From Briefing.com: 4:35 pm : The broader equity market logged its fourth straight gain amid encouraging corporate headlines, continued weakness in the U.S. dollar, and a better-than-feared weekly jobless claims report. However, technical resistance capped the move by stocks.
Dow component Alcoa (AA 14.35, +0.15) kicked off earnings season last evening in positive fashion. The company brought in an adjusted $0.04 per share, which was considerably better than the loss of $0.09 per share that had been widely expected. Alcoa went on to issue a relatively upbeat outlook. Shares of AA started the session at fresh highs for 2009, but the stock drifted off of its opening levels for the rest of the session.
Still, Alcoa's report was enough to set the materials sector on a strong course. The sector finished 2.0% higher.
Materials stocks were also helped by higher commodity prices, which were bolstered by a weaker dollar. With the greenback shedding 0.6% against a basket of major foreign currencies, the CRB Commodity Index climbed 2.1%.
Once again, gold was a standout among commodities. The yellow metal finished 1.1% higher at $1056.20 per ounce, but had been as high as $1062.70 per ounce, which marks a new record high.
Oil futures also garnered strong interest. Crude contracts settled with oil priced 3.0% higher at $71.68 per barrel. Oil's enviable gain helped lift oil and gas drillers 4.3% and oil and gas explorers 3.9%, which gave the broader energy sector a 2.3% gain, better than any other major sector.
Retailers were also among the session's better performers. As a group, they finished with a 1.8% gain. The advance followed a flurry of same-store sales results for September. Though many companies continued to see softer sales results, the numbers showed an improvement from previous months and were also better than expected. JCPenney (JCP 35.16, +0.25) and Kohl's (KSS 59.97, +1.43) went so far as to raise their outlook in the wake of their monthly sales results.
The broader market was also helped by news that initial claims for the week ending October 3 fell 33,000 to 521,000, which is below the 540,000 that was widely expected. Meanwhile, continuing claims fell 72,000 to 6.04 million, which is below the consensus call of 6.11 million. Though the numbers were better than feared, there is cold comfort in knowing that initial claims remain at uncomfortable levels and continuing claims have come down as a result of expired jobless benefits.
Though the broader market traded with strength for the entire session, it did encounter some resistance as the S&P 500 attempted to push through levels in-line with its 2009 closing highs. Failure to push through that mark coincided with the dollar's move off of its session low, which was marked when the Dollar Index was down 0.8%, and left stocks to pare some of their gains in afternoon trading.
The pullback was particularly hurtful to the financial sector, which had been up as much as 1.3% before finishing with a modest 0.2% gain. Regional banks weighed on the sector after several were assigned a Sell rating by analysts at UBS. Regional banks closed with a 1.1% loss.
Health care stocks also underperformed. The sector settled with a fractional loss amid weakness in managed care stocks (-4.6%), which were pressured on comments regarding possible windfall taxes for insurers.
Telecom stocks were the worst performers for the second straight session, however. The sector surrendered 0.8%.
Treasuries encountered some of their own weakness following an auction of 30-year Bonds. The auction produced a bid-to-cover ratio of roughly 2.4 and a high yield of 4.0%. The 30-year Bond responded to the auction by surrendering more than one full point, while the benchmark 10-year Note dropped some 18 ticks, which put its yield back around 3.25%.
Advancing Sectors: Energy (+2.3%), Materials (+2.0%), Consumer Discretionary (+1.5%), Industrials (+1.2%), Consumer Staples (+0.6%), Tech (+0.4%), Utilities (+0.2%), Financials (+0.2%)
Declining Sectors: Telecom (-0.8%), Health Care (-0.1%)DJ30 +61.29 NASDAQ +13.60 NQ100 +0.4% R2K +0.9% SP400 +1.4% SP500 +7.90 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1535/2.42 bln/1131 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2203/1.28 bln/817
4:11PM CalAmp reports Q2 EPS of ($0.17) vs ($0.08) Single analyst estimate; co reports revs of $23.9 mln vs $25.00 mln Single analyst estimate (CAMP) 2.66 +0.46 : Co sees Q3 EPS in the range of ($0.04) to $0.00 vs $0.00 First Call consensus and sees Q3 revs to be in the range of $29 to $32 mln vs $31 mln First Call consensus. With the increased demand and strong operating momentum the firm expects further growth in 4Q10 and sees revs of $34 to $38 mln vs $32 mln First Call consensus.
11:02AM NVIDIA and GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms sign agreement to develop new hardware (NVDA) 13.49 -0.40 : GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms (GE) announced that it had signed an agreement with NVIDIA for GE Fanuc to develop new hardware products using NVIDIA graphics processing units based on the award-winning CUDA architecture, for military and aerospace applications. These new products will deliver substantial increases in processing capability for applications and environments that require leading edge computing such as radar, signals intelligence and video surveillance and interpretation.
9:00AM Advanced Micro names Thomas Seifert Chief Financial Officer (AMD) 5.54 : Co announced the appointment of Thomas Seifert as senior vice president and chief financial officer. Seifert joins AMD from Qimonda, where he most recently was a member of the Management Board as well as chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
7:35AM On The Wires : Rudolph Technologies (RTEC) announces that it has received an order for multiple back-end inspection tools from Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASX)...
7:24AM United Micro reports Sept net sales increased 18.41% YoY to NT$9.53 bln (UMC) :
Rogers Wireless (RCI) and Research In Motion (RIMM) launched the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone..
09:38 am Motorola: Broadpoint AmTech expects meet and keep with improvement in handsets: . Broadpoint AmTech expects MOT to meet its $0.00 on $5.5 bln est, which is in-line with consensus when it reports earnings October 29. Firm expects MOT's core businesses to perform in-line. AmTech reduced its Sept. handset units to 14 mln from 14.8 mln last qtr, but believe cost cuts will keep losses in-line with its original forecast. Firm is comfortable with its Dec. est of $0.05, which assumes a less than seasonal improvement for MOT's core businesses and the initial ramp of MOT's new Android handsets. Firm is encouraged that MOT is on track with its stated goal for Android, with the CLIQ ramping to three global carriers and the Sholes announcement forthcoming from VZ.
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