From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : The stock market settled shy of its session high, but it still managed to score a gain, which successfully snapped a six-session losing streak.
There weren't really any inspiring headlines this morning, but the growing belief that stocks are near-term oversold drove some relief buying. In turn, participants shrugged off news that initial jobless claims for the week ended June 4 totaled 427,000, which is greater than the 423,000 initial claims that had been expected among economists polled by Briefing.com. The latest tally was little changed from the prior week's count.
Although U.S. exports increased by just 1.3% in April after they had climbed by 4.9% in March, the U.S. trade deficit for April totaled $43.7 billion, which isn't quite as deep as the $48.7 billion deficit that had been broadly expected. The latest deficit is also less than the downwardly revised March deficit of $46.8 billion.
There was little corporate news to trade today, but Texas Instruments (TXN 32.91, +0.24) came into focus for cutting its guidance then clarifying that the revision was due to softer demand from a single wireless customer. Fellow semiconductor play National Semiconductor (NSM 24.58, -0.01) failed to see much action ahead of its quarterly report as participants generally ignored the rest of the tech space. A general lack of interest among tech plays left the sector to muster a gain of merely 0.1%. Listlessness in the space also hampered the Nasdaq, which ended the day with only a modest gain.
A bullish USDA report bolstered strength in shares of agricultural chemical and product companies. That helped the broader materials sector climb more than 2% before it drifted into the close to settle with a 1.6% gain.
Financials finally made a strong move higher after falling to a 2011 low in the prior session. The sector's 1.2% gain came in response to strength among both banking issues and insurance plays.
The improved tone among market participants this session took both the Dow and S&P 500 to gains of little more than 1%. The pair spent most of the afternoon stuck in a narrow trading range before slowly surrendering some of their gains into the close.
The stock market's late slip helped relieve Treasuries from some selling. Treasuries had set session lows shortly after the early afternoon release of results from an auction of 30-year Bonds. The auction drew a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.63, dollar demand of $34.2 billion, and an indirect bidder participation rate of 38.4%.
Market participants spent most of the session giving little consideration to a stronger dollar, which was helped by weakness in the euro after European Central Bank President Trichet stated the need to remain vigilant in an environment of upward inflation pressure and economic uncertainty. The ECB opted to keep its target interest rate unchanged at 1.25%.
Advancing Sectors: Materials (+1.6%), Energy (+1.2%), Financials (+1.2%), Health Care (+1.0%), Consumer Discretionary (+0.8%), Industrials (+0.7%), Consumer Staples (+0.5%), Tech (+0.1%), Utilities (+0.1%)
Declining Sectors: Telecom (-0.1%)DJ30 +75.42 NASDAQ +9.49 NQ100 +0.2% R2K +0.6% SP400 +0.5% SP500 +9.44 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1599/1.71 bln/1002 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1904/908 mln/1076
4:04PM National Semi misses by $0.01, beats on revs (NSM) 24.58 -0.01 : Reports Q4 (May) earnings of $0.26 per share, $0.01 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.27; revenues fell 6.1% year/year to $374.1 mln vs the $365.1 mln consensus. Gross margin was 66.5 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011 - flat with Q3 and down from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. Although revenue increased sequentially, factory utilization dropped slightly in order to reduce days of inventory by 13 in the fourth quarter from 109 days to 96. National reported gross margin of 66.5 percent in the third quarter of fiscal 2011 and 68.8 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. "Business conditions were a little better than we expected in the quarter. With bookings up 21%, the first increase for three quarters, we were able to get back to meaningful quarterly revenue growth." National will hold a special meeting of stockholders on June 21, 2011 to seek stockholder approval of the merger with TXN.
AMD (AMD) announced an investment in ViVu, a desktop videoconferencing solutions co. The AMD Fusion Fund program makes strategic investments in companies that are developing unique, digital consumer and professional experiences that take advantage of the power of the innovative AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit products.
10:03 am TXN Lowers Q2 Guidance (TXN)
Texas Instrument (TXN $33.19 +0.52) lowered second quarter earnings guidance to $0.51 to $0.55 versus $0.58 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate, from $0.52 to $0.60.
The company also lowered revenue guidance to $3.36 billion to $3.50 billion versus the $3.55 billion Capital IQ Consensus Estimate, from $3.41 billion to $3.69 billion.
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