From Briefing.com: 4:15 pm : Late selling pressured stocks, but the major averages still made out with another modest gain. Treasuries ticked higher, too. Little attention was paid to the dollar, which dropped markedly.
Though buying during the session remained reserved, broad support helped take the stock market to a new two-year high today. Sellers knocked stocks off of that perch in the last leg of trade, but the session ended before the ticker tape could print red. The S&P 500 has managed to settle out of the red on all but three occasions this month. The benchmark index is now on pace for an annual gain of about 13% with only two sessions remaining in 2010.
As an overall group energy stocks boasted some of the biggest gains of the day. They were only up narrowly in the early going, but ended the day 0.8% higher. The sector was largely led by drillers and equipment plays, which settled with gains of 1.8% and 2.0%, respectively.
Fertilizer and agricultural plays also found favor among participants. That helped Potash (POT 152.07, +7.40), Mosaic (MOS 74.80, +3.36), and Agrium (AGU 90.16, +3.90) surge to new two-year highs. Their strength also helped prop up the basic materials sector so that it settled with a 0.4% gain, which was second only to energy.
Financials and utilities lagged all session; both ended the day with a 0.3% loss. Financials, which had been leaders earlier this month, were weighed down by investment banks and brokerages like Morgan Stanley (MS 27.28, -0.38). Utilities were undercut by losses in electric utilities like Exelon (EXC 41.57, -0.39).
Just as a rally by the dollar was shrugged off in the prior session, nothing was really made of its 0.8% drop today. Relative to a basket of foreign currencies the dollar is still up 2.4% for the year.
Treasuries attempted to recover the losses sustained during the prior session with a strong rally today. The benchmark 10-year Note gained more than a point so that its yield was at 3.34% by the end of the day. Buying came in response to results from an auction of 7-year Notes. The auction attracted dollar demand of $82.9 billion while the bid-to-cover ratio came in at 2.86. The indirect bidder participation rate hit 64.2%. All were improved from the prior session.
Share volume was anemic once again as barely a half billion shares traded hands on the NYSE. That's only half of the NYSE's 50-day moving average of 1.00 billion shares. However, trading volume surpassed Monday's paltry total of 467 million shares, which made for the second lowest tally of the entire year.
Advancing Sectors: Energy (+0.8%), Materials (+0.4%), Consumer Discretionary (+0.2%), Health Care (+0.1%), Tech (+0.1%), Telecom (+0.1%)
Declining Sectors: Financials (-0.3%), Utilities (-0.3%), Industrials (-0.1%)
Unchanged: Consumer StaplesDJ30 +9.84 NASDAQ +4.05 NQ100 +0.2% R2K +0.1% SP400 +0.3% SP500 +1.27 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1441/1.13 bln/1194 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1922/518 mln/1091
7:16 am ON Semiconductor target raised to $13 at FBR Capital: . FBR Capital raises their ONNN tgt to $13 from $12 1Q EPS saying recent checks suggest 4Q revenues are tracking toward the upper end of guidance, with EPS likely one or two pennies better than consensus. For 1Q, they think ON's organic revenues can decline less than seasonally typical, likely by 2%-4% QOQ, but with EPS possibly better than the Street expects. Firm says while some investors have fretted about the Sanyo acquisition, they expect this deal to close in the next week or so, and think earnings can ramp faster than previously expected given the "operational support" that Sanyo Electric is providing to ON Semi.
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