From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : The S&P 500 suffered its worst single-session percentage loss in four weeks today, but it still made it out of October with its best monthly gain in nearly 20 years.
Market participants were inclined to sell today. They took their cues from overseas markets this morning and never really looked back. That left stocks to slog along with substantial losses and settle at session lows.
Last week Europe's leaders announced plans to shore up the continent's financial conditions, but it appeared that euphoria related to that announcement evaporated over the weekend. That prompted global participants to drop Germany's DAX and France's CAC for losses of more than 3%.
Confidence in the euro was also lost. In turn, it dove more than 2% against the greenback. The yen was an even poorer performing currency, though. It tumbled more than 3% after Japan's officials intervened in the currency in an effort to curb its strength after it had set a post-WWII record high last week.
Natural resource plays suffered the worst losses this session. That left the energy sector to tumble 4.4% and the materials sector to slide 4.2%. Financials weren't far behind; the sector fell 3.9%.
Defensive in nature, utilities made up the only sector that managed to find positive territory at all this session, but broad market weakness ultimately undermined its efforts and left it to log a 0.7% loss. It was the only sector to limit its loss to less than 1%.
Today's sell-off ate into the gains that the stock market had amassed in the course of the past four weeks, which had the stock market on track for one of its best monthly performances on record. Still, the S&P 500 finished October with a monthly gain of almost 11%, which is not only its first monthly gain since April, but it is also its best monthly performance since December 1991.
Advancing Sectors: (None)
Declining Sectors: Energy -4.4%, Materails -4.2%, Financials -3.9%, Industrials -2.5%, Health Care -1.9%, Tech -1.8%, Telecom -1.7%, Consumer Discretionary -1.5%, Consumer Staples -1.3%, Utilities -0.7%DJ30 -276.10 NASDAQ -52.74 NQ100 -1.7% R2K -2.6% SP400 -2.5% SP500 -31.78 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 560/1.77 bln/2007 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 556/1.11 bln/2464
4:41PM ATMI acquires full control of SDS rights (ATMI) 20.40 -0.61 : Co announced it has taken control of, and responsibility for, worldwide distribution of ATMI's proprietary Safe Delivery Source, or SDS, gas storage and delivery system and related technologies from Matheson Tri-Gas, Inc. The two cos have signed an agreement that terminates Matheson's license, manufacturing, and distribution agreement in exchange for a $95 mln cash payment. "This deal further advances our leading market position and will significantly strengthen our base revenues, margins, and earnings. The transaction will be highly accretive and is expected to generate $7-8 mln of incremental product revenues and $0.08-0.09 of incremental earnings per diluted share on a quarterly basis, beginning in the second quarter of 2012. The expected unfavorable impact on revenues over the combined next two quarters could be up to $16 million, when compared to the expected post-transaction revenue level. Additionally, under existing accounting rules, we expect to take a one-time contract termination charge of ~$80-$85 mln in the fourth quarter, subject to completion of our fair value analysis."
4:07PM Rudolph Tech beats by $0.11, reports revs in-line (RTEC) 7.37 -0.42 : Reports Q3 (Sep) earnings of $0.21 per share, $0.11 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.10; revenues fell 20.8% year/year to $41.4 mln vs the $41.1 mln consensus.
4:02PM Integrated Device beats by $0.04, reports revs in-line (IDTI) 6.08 -0.16 : Reports Q2 (Sep) earnings of $0.11 per share, $0.04 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.07; revenues fell 13.3% year/year to $138.3 mln vs the $139.4 mln consensus. "Despite macroeconomic headwinds, we experienced strong sequential growth in Serial RapidIO switches for wireless base stations and timing solutions for consumer devices, as well as robust design activity for new products."
Riverbed Technology (RVBD) announced it has joined the OpenStack community, a global community of developers collaborating on cloud architecture and an open source cloud operating system.
Altera (ALTR) announced it will demonstrate its latest industrial embedded solutions for energy-efficient and safety-integrated drive systems at SPS/IPC/DRIVES Electric Automation Exhibition and Conference in Nuremberg, Germany.
EMCORE (EMKR) announced that the it has been awarded a contract by ASRC Research and Technology Solutions, Greenbelt, Maryland for the design, manufacturing and delivery of solar panels for NASA Ames' Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission.
Sonics announced Microchip Technology (MCHP) has licensed a number of its popular on-chip networks and memory subsystems for its 32-bit PIC32 microcontroller family.
Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that TTK has chosen Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers to provide the Ethernet bandwidth required to ensure high-speed connectivity while delivering innovative applications and services such as IP-VPN, L2-VPN, video conference across Russia and IP-transit to its subscribers across 75,000 km of cables running along railway lines and 1,000 access nodes
SanDisk (SNDK $51.26 -2.12) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy with a target price of $58 at Sterne Agee saying they believe Sandisk is one of the best long-term stories with the move to SSD and its 3-bit manufacturing lead, but Sandisk has had a 65% rebound in the last 2 months and is < 10% from its 5-year high. They believe near term Sandisk is baking in most of the upside from near-term positive NAND trends and HDD shortages.
11:43 am S&P Tech Sector Down One Percent, Outperforming S&P 500 (BRCM)
The tech sector is trading lower today, just ahead of losses in the broader market. Semiconductors are showing relative weakness in the tech space, however, with the Philly Semi Index trading 1.8% lower. WFR (-8.7%) is a notable laggard in that chip index. Among other major indices, the S&P 500 is trading 1.4% lower, while the NASDAQ is trading 1.1% lower The QQQ, meanwhile, is trading 1.0% lower on the session. Among tech bellwethers, AAPL (+0.5%) is a notable outperformer, while ORCL (-1.6%) is lagging.
In earnings this morning, SOHU (-9.9%) reported a mixed quarter and guidance, while CYOU (-13.7%) posted a slight beat and inline guidance.
In news, YHOO (-5.3%) is to consider a buyback and dividend rather than sale of company, according to reports. Among rumors, there is chatter of an outside investment in YOKU (-5.9%) making the rounds.
Among notable analyst upgrades this morning, BRCM (-1.2%) was upgraded to Outperform at JMP Securities, CRM (-2.7%) was downgraded to Equal Weight at Global Equity Research, and JNPR (+0.4%) was upgraded to Outperform at RBC Capital. In downgrades, Sterne Agee downgraded SNDK (-4.0%) to Neutral.
LEAP (+0.7%) was the notable names in tech set to report results today after the close.
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