From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : Broad-based buying drove the stock market to another strong gain today. The action makes for the broad market's best back-to-back performance in more than three months.
All 10 major sectors staged gains, but Materials and Industrials put on the most impressive performances. They scored gains of 1.6% and 1.4%, respectively. Hot Topic (HOTT 9.86, +1.07) and Coach (COH 76.82, +3.43) led the Consumer Discretionary sector to a 1.0% gain. Shares of HOTT spiked to a near three-year high as buying interest heated up in response to stronger-than-expected earnings, upside guidance, and a dividend hike. Encouraging comments from Coach management at a conference took shares of the apparel and accessories outfit up sharply to a record high before momentum began to wane.
McDonald's (MCD 96.96, -3.22) was unable to take part in the Consumer Discretionary sector's climb due to disappointment over the company's latest monthly comparable store sales report. Comparable sales in the US grew by 11.1%, but global growth grew at a less rapid clip of 7.5%.
Heavyweight Apple (AAPL 541.99, +11.30) advanced impressively as investors and traders dismissed news that the Justice Department claims that the company colluded to raise electronic book prices.
The highly influential Financial sector experienced some seesaw-like action before fighting its way to a 1.0% gain. AIG (AIG 28.31, -1.14) failed to follow the rest of the sector after it was learned that the Treasury Department has filed to offer more than 200 million common shares of AIG for $29.00 per share.
Positive sentiment was supported by confidence that Greece's debt swap was met with strong demand. The swap concluded today, but official results will not be released until early Friday morning. Such speculation helped take down debt yields of countries in the eurozone periphery and gave a boost to the euro, which was up 1.0% to $1.327 at the closing bell.
The euro was hardly influenced by the European Central Bank's decision to keep its target interest rate at 1.00%, as had been generally expected. The Bank of England also opted to stand pat on its policy, which has an interest rate target of 0.5% and an asset purchase program of 325 billion pounds.
The only dose of data was the latest weekly jobless claims, which totaled 362,000. Economists polled by Briefing.com had expected, on average, a tally closer to 355,000 on the heels of an upwardly revised claims count of 354,000 for the prior week. The numbers are unlikely to influence expectations for the official monthly payrolls report that will be released tomorrow morning -- the consensus among economists polled by Briefing.com calls for non-farm payrolls to increase by 250,000, private payrolls to climb by 275,000, and a headline unemployment rate of 8.3%.
Strong buying in back-to-back sessions has the S&P 500 up 1.7% in only two days. It also has the Volatility Index back below 18. This past Tuesday a barrage of selling caused the euphemistically labeled Fear Gauge to spike to 21.
Advancing Sectors: Materials +1.6%, Industrials +1.4%, Health Care +1.2%, Tech +1.1%, Financials +1.0%, Consumer Discretionary +1.0%, Telecom +0.7%, Consumer Staples +0.6%, Energy +0.5%, Utilities +0.4%
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +70.61 NASDAQ +34.73 NQ100 +1.1% R2K +1.3% SP400 +1.2% SP500 +13.28 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1824/1.61 bln/695 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2406/716 mln/615
4:31PM Texas Instruments lowers Q1 EPS to $0.25-0.29 from $0.26-0.34 prior guidance excluding $0.10 in acquisition costs vs $0.32 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; lowers revs to $2.99-3.11 bln from $3.02-3.28 bln prior guidance vs $3.16 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate (TXN) 32.60 -0.05 : Co said the reductions are due to lower demand for Wireless products.
6:20AM Suntech Power misses by $0.45, beats on revs (STP) 2.92 : Reports Q4 (Dec) loss of $0.76 per share, $0.45 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of ($0.31); revenues fell 33.4% year/year to $629 mln vs the $596.04 mln consensus. Gross margin in the first quarter of 2012 is expected to be in the range of 3% to 6%. As a result of lower than expected inventory level and seasonal weakness in demand, Suntech expects shipments in Q1 to decline by ~30% QoQ. For FY12, Suntech expects shipments to be in the range of 2.1-2.5GW. "Looking into 2012, we expect excess capacity and further policy adjustments in Europe and the U.S. will result in a sustained period of intense competition in the solar industry. In this context, our top priorities are to continue to drive down our production cost, invest in channel development and bring to market the most competitive product offerings. These actions will help us maintain our position as the leading supplier of solar products."
09:21 am Ciena upgraded to Buy at Stifel Nicolaus; tgt $20: . Stifel Nicolaus upgrades CIEN to Buy from Hold and sets target price at $20 based on checks at the optical show OFC, they believe that demand for 40 and 100G is increasing with most component vendors seeing firm orders from system vendors. They believe the fact that pricing on 40/100G is now fairly comparable to 10G is helping spur demand. Additionally, coherent 40/100G have been in the market long enough to give carriers greater comfort in deploying the solution. Firm also says Ciena is seeing positive demand in the US despite a flat capex environment with spending skewed toward wireless. This syncs with their view that being exposed to the right area in terms of customer spending priorities is important and they believe that both Verizon and AT&T (both large Ciena customers) are committed to 40/100G upgrades.
Semtech (SMTC $25.84 -2.30) reported fourth quarter earnings of $0.32 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.02 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.30. while revenues fell 10.6% year/year to $104 million versus the $105.17 million consensus. The company issued downside guidance for the first quarter with EPS of $0.28-0.32, excluding non-recurring items, versus the $0.36 consensus with revenues of $102-108 versus the $111.70 million consensus.
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