From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : The stock market stretched its streak of gains to six even though interest among buyers cooled amid a mixed batch of headlines.
Better-than-expected earnings and an upside forecast from UPS (UPS 68.89, +3.44) after the prior session's close seemed to set the stage for continued gains in the early going. The report propelled UPS to its best single-session percentage gain in more than one year and pushed the Dow Jones Transportation Index up 1.7% to a new 52-week high. CSX (CSX 55.25, -0.21) lagged even though analysts at Deutsche Bank raised their target on the rail carrier.
The broader market had a hard time trading in a clear direction as bounces fleeted and retreats ran into technical support. Still, the stock market was able to eke out another gain, which made for the best streak of gains by the S&P 500 in one month.
Action was also a bit choppy in the Nasdaq Composite, but the tech rich index resisted efforts to retreat into the red. Its relative strength was rooted in continued interest in large-cap tech ahead of the latest results from Google (GOOG 595.30, +6.30).
The dollar acted as an occasional headwind this session. It settled nearly 0.4% higher against a basket of foreign currencies as the euro was pressured amid rekindled concerns about the ability of Greece to service its debt and word that the country has lowered expectations for the amount it hopes to raise from a global dollar bond at the end of this month.
Rather than cheer China's torrid 11.9% increase in first quarter GDP, many market watchers in Asia grew increasingly concerned about the prospect of tighter monetary policy in the country, regardless of some cooler-than-expected inflationary data.
Stateside data proved mixed. Weekly initial jobless claims were up more than expected to 484,000, while continuing claims climbed to a worse-than-expected 4.64 million.
Industrial production during March increased a much smaller-than-expected 0.1%, while at 73.2% capacity utilization was generally in-line with what had been expected.
The Empire State Manufacturing Survey hit a five-month high of 31.9 and the Philadelphia Fed Survey for April came in at 20.2 to beat the consensus estimate.
Trading volume was strong this session. In fact, with nearly 1.2 billion shares traded on the NYSE this session, volume on the big board surpassed its 200-day moving average for the first time since a quadruple witching options session nearly one month ago. Monthly options are set to expire tomorrow, so trading volume could see another spike in the week's final session.
Participants can also look forward to results from Bank of America (BAC 19.48, +0.08) and the latest housing start figures and building permit numbers Friday. The preliminary reading on consumer sentiment for April from the University of Michigan is also due tomorrow.
Advancing Sectors: Industrials (+0.9%), Tech (+0.5%), Consumer Discretionary (+0.4%)
Declining Sectors: Financials (-0.5%), Consumer Staples (-0.3%), Health Care (-0.3%), Telecom (-0.2%), Utilities (-0.2%)
Unchanged: Materials, Energy DJ30 +21.46 NASDAQ +10.83 NQ100 +0.5% R2K +0.3% SP400 -0.1% SP500 +1.02 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1537/2.76 bln/1145 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1449/1.20 bln/1549
1:25PM Power-One announces its digital power technology patent license agreement and dismissal of legal proceedings (PWER) 4.87 +0.42 : Co announced that it, and Emerson's (EMR) wholly owned subsidiaries Artesyn Technologies, Inc. and Astec America Inc., have entered into a non-exclusive, worldwide, Field of Use agreement for certain of Power-One's digital power technology patents. The parties further agreed to jointly dismiss with prejudice all pending lawsuits. The non-exclusive license agreement allows Emerson to offer non-isolated DC/DC conversion devices designed for board-mounting that: include a serial communications bus interface designed and adapted to receive control commands and send monitoring information; are designed and adapted to be used in an array of non-isolated DC/DC power conversion devices linked to a common serial communications bus; and are designed and adapted to be used to power one or more devices.
9:05AM Novellus raises Q1 EPS guidance due to lower-than-expected tax rate (NVLS) 26.92 : Co raises guidance for Q1 (Mar), sees EPS of $0.47, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.40 Thomson Reuters consensus. The company had previously forecasted its fiscal 2010 effective tax rate to be within a range of 25% to 30%. Due to an analysis of the impact of a recent U.S. Tax Court opinion on its tax expense related to foreign operations, the company is revising its fiscal 2010 effective tax rate guidance to a range of 15% to 20%.
7:32AM Fairchild Semi beats by $0.01, beats on revs; guides Q2 revs above consensus (FCS) 12.41 : Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $0.25 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.01 better than the Thomson Reuters consensus of $0.24; revenues rose 6.6% year/year to $378 mln vs the $371.6 mln consensus. Co issues upside guidance for Q2, sees Q2 revs of $395-400 mln vs. $380.47 mln Thomson Reuters consensus. "Our current scheduled backlog is sufficient to achieve the low end of this range. We still have availability for certain packages in the current quarter and we are working on numerous approaches to optimize supply which combined could support sales at the high end of the range or better. We expect to increase gross margin to 33 to 34 percent due primarily to a richer product mix as a number of new designs ramp into production." Fairchild reported first quarter adjusted gross margin of 32.5 percent, up 220 basis points sequentially and 17 percentage points higher than in the first quarter of 2009. "Demand remained robust throughout the quarter including better-than-seasonal order rates during the Asian holidays. Demand strength is broad based with the greatest growth for our products targeted to the computing, power supply, industrial and automotive end markets. We are effectively managing our supply through capacity reservations in our advanced order management system to support our top tier customers, which represent roughly 75 percent of our sales. Our sales growth was evenly balanced between OEM and distribution channels. Distributor sell through increased 5 percent sequentially which is significantly better than normal seasonality. The upside in sell through drove a channel inventory reduction of about 2 percent from the prior quarter, resulting in a record low 7.8 weeks of inventory. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of sell through growth and fifth quarter of channel inventory reduction. If we add this channel inventory reduction to our sales, we estimate actual consumption demand was approximately $381 million for the first quarter."
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