From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : Broad-based buying sent stocks to their best levels in more than two years. The move began with help from strong action overseas, where a couple of more sovereign debt offerings helped perpetuate a positive tone.
Greece and Italy both had successful debt auctions yesterday, but today's successful offerings from Germany and Portugal provided further assurance that there is still demand for the region's debt. That helped stir confidence among investors, who drove the EuroStoxx 50 to a 3.0% gain -- its strongest single-session move in three months.
Big gains abroad provided a positive backdrop to for action at home. Strong demand for stocks sent the Dow, Nasdaq Composite, and S&P 500 to new two-year highs. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq 100, S&P 400, and Russell 2000 all recorded fresh three-year highs.
Financials experienced some of the strongest demand of the day. The sector was spurred to a 1.7% gain. Share volume in the sector was highest among banking issues.
An appetite for the relative risk of stocks caused rotation out of the dollar. That left the greenback to tumble 1.0% against a basket of competing currencies, namely the euro. The euro lacked direction in the early going, but it gradually worked its way to a gain of about 1.3% at $1.314.
Treasuries were also weakened by the move to own stocks, but they were able to trim losses following strong results from an auction of 10-year Notes. The auction drew a bid-to-cover ratio of 3.30 and dollar demand of $69.3 billion, which marks the strongest dollar demand since August 2009. The indirect bidder participation rate was 53.6%, the fourth highest in more than two years.
The Treasury's Budget deficit for December totaled $80 billion, down from the $91.4 billion deficit that was recorded last month.
The Fed's latest Beige Book indicated that across the various Fed districts conditions were better in manufacturing, retail, and nonfinancial services than they were in financial services or real estate, which remained weak across all districts. Labor markets were said to be firming somewhat in most districts.
Advancing Sectors: Financials (+1.7%), Energy (+1.2%), Materials (+0.9%), Tech (+0.9%), Industrials (+0.9%), Consumer Staples (+0.8%), Utilities (+0.5%), Health Care (+0.5%), Telecom (+0.5%), Consumer Discretionary (+0.3%)
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +83.56 NASDAQ +20.50 NQ100 +0.7% R2K +0.8% SP400 +0.6% SP500 +11.48 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1785/1.88 bln/859 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2158/960 mln/854
8:31AM O2Micro receives patent for Phase-on-demand invention (OIIM) 6.39 : Designed for large panel LCD TV and LCD Monitor applications that support multiple-load light sources, this patented invention reduces the time-to-market and system cost. Its design methodology regulates power delivered to loads.
8:01AM Silicom Limited announces new design wins from major customer to boost co's revs by ~$2 mln/year (SILC) 18.22 : Co announces that one of its largest customers has selected Silicom to supply an additional three products, including two encryption cards and one special networking card. Based on the customer's forecasts, co expects the volume of purchase orders for these cards to ramp up gradually to ~$2 million per year, bringing the customer's purchases from Silicom to a total of ~$5 million per year.
7:30AM QLogic raises Q3 guidance above consensus (QLGC) 16.96 : Co raises Q3 non-GAAP EPS guidance to $0.38-0.39 (ex-a $0.10 tax benefit) from $0.34-0.38 vs. the $0.36 Thomson Reuters consensus; raises revs to $155-156 mln from $148-156 mln vs $153.32 mln Thomson Reuters consensus. "Our revenue performance was primarily driven by sequential growth in revenue for our Host Products compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2011. In addition, we experienced sequential growth in revenue for our Network Products. Our strong operating performance is expected to include higher gross margin and lower operating expenses than the previously provided guidance."
07:22 am Intel: Priced for mediocrity; expect better for the stock - Auriga: . Auriga notes investors appear to be focused on tablet cannibalization of client PCs -- MSFT's announcement that the next version of its Windows OS will run on ARMH architecture has exacerbated these concerns. It's also clear that Q4 was well below normal seasonality, and its model suggests that Q1 will come in a touch light of consensus expectations. However, firm's work suggests that the stock is already discounting most of the bad news, while not taking into account increased data center requirements that the profusion of relatively under-powered mobile devices will drive over the next several years. FQ410 (December) results after market close on Thursday
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