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From Briefing.com: Weekly Recap - Week ending 04-May-12Stocks were up nicely a few days ago, but fell in the last three sessions to finish the week at a low point, giving the S&P 500 a 2.4% weekly loss -- its worst weekly performance of the year. The sell-off on Friday followed a disappointing jobs report and concerted selling of the market's most influential sectors.

Premarket participants initially had only a modestly negative response to the April payrolls report, which inidcated that nonfarm jobs increased by 115,000 and nonfarm private payrolls increased by 130,000. However, both came short of Briefing.com consensus estimates for increases of 162,000 and 167,000, respectively. The headline unemployment rate of 8.1% was slightly less than the 8.2% that had been broadly anticipated, though.

A flurry of selling sank stocks upon the open. The effort gradually gained momentum into early afternoon trade, leaving stocks to drift along session lows for the final few hours of the day. Weakness was widespread, but Energy and Tech stocks were hit the hardest. Both settled with losses in excess of 2%. Financials fell 1.6%.

Utilities stocks made gains in the face of broad market weakness. The defensive-oriented sector's 0.2% gain was helped along by a few better-than-expected earnings reports from industry players -- the latest round of earnings results was generally uninspiring, however.

An interest in safety prompted some to rotate into the dollar, which advanced 0.3% against a basket of major forein currencies today. It gained about 1.0% for the week. Treasuries also traded higher. In turn, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Note fell to a three-month low of less than 1.90%.

Precious metals attracted buyers, gaining their only gain of the week. Losses in previous sessions ultimately led gold and silver to finish the week 1.2% lower at $1645.40 per ounce and 3.1% lower at $31.42 per ounce, respectively.

Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude oil prices were cut down aggressively. The energy component closed pit trade at a new three-month low of $98.49 per barrel with a 6.1% loss for the week. Broad market weakness amid macro concerns and reports that oil production in Iraq is expected to pick up exacerbated selling pressure.

Although it was learned yesterday that initial weekly jobless claims fell more than expected from the prior week to 365,000, market participants were given a clue on Wednesday that April private payrolls might not have been as strong as economists had predicted when the latest ADP Employment Report suggested that nonfarm private payrolls increased by only 119,000, contrasting with calls for an increase of 170,000.

Other data failed to provide an entirely positive picture, given that the ISM Manufacturing Index made surprise improvement to 54.8 from 53.4 in the prior month, but the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index fell from 56.0 in the prior month to 53.5 for April, missing expectations for a print of 55.5. China reported a Manufacturing PMI reading of 53.3, which is its best reading in about one year, but it is still less than what had been widely expected. Most of Europe also reported disappointing Manufacturing PMI readings this week.

Personal spending increased by 0.3% during March, but that's a slower clip than the 0.5% increase that had been expected, on average, among economists polled by Briefing.com. The smaller-than-expected increase came despite a stronger-than-expected pickup in personal income, which increased by 0.4% when a 0.2% increase had been widely anticipated. As for core personal consumption expenditures (PCE), they increased by 0.2% month over month, as had been broadly expected.

..Nasdaq 100 -2.5%. ..S&P Midcap 400 -1.6%. ..Russell 2000 -1.8%. ..NYSE Adv/Dec 733/2282. ..NASDAQ Adv/Dec 501/2017.

 
 Index	  Started Week  Ended Week   Change  % Change  YTD % 
 DJIA	    13228.31	 13038.27   -190.04    -1.4    6.7 
 Nasdaq	     3069.20	  2956.34   -112.86    -3.7   13.5 
 S&P 500	     1403.36	  1369.10    -34.26    -2.4    8.9 
 Russell 2000  825.47	   791.84    -33.63    -4.1    6.9

10:04AM Nokia comment on class action complaint says ' reviewing the allegations contained in the complaint and believes that they are without merit' (NOK) 3.23 -0.12 : Co stated 'Nokia has become aware of the filing of a securities class action complaint naming Nokia Corporation as a defendant, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on May 3, 2012. Nokia is reviewing the allegations contained in the complaint and believes that they are without merit. Nokia will defend itself against the complaint.'

11:41 am Tech Stocks lower today along with market

The tech sector is trading lower today, just trailing losses in the broader market. Semiconductors are showing slight relative strength with the Philly Semi Index trading only 1.5% lower. POWI (+16.4%) is a notable leader in that chip index. Among other major indices, the SPY is trading 1.2% lower today, while the QQQ is down 1.8% and the NASDAQ is trading 1.7% lower on the session. Among tech bellwethers, ORCL (-2.6%) is showing notable weakness.

In earnings last night, LNKD (+9.0%), TRMB (-2.6%), SPRD (+14.9%), and SWIR (+6.0%) posted quarterly beats and raises, while DRIV (-11.5%) reported a beat but issued downside guidance. Elsewhere, DLB (+17.2%) posted a beat and announced a deal with MSFT (-1.9%) to include Dolby tech into Windows 8. In news, NOK (-5.2%) is trading lower after the company received a class action lawsuit alleging that it misled investors regarding its transition to MSFT's (-1.9%) Windows platform. Among notable analyst upgrades this morning, DLB (+17.2%) was upgraded at William Blair and Avondale, GA (-2.0%) and SPRD (+15.1%) were upgraded to Neutral at BofA/Merrill, and Stifel Nicolaus upgraded CTCT (+3.7%) to Buy While in downgrades, DRWI (0.0%) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Jefferies.

LinkedIn (LNKD $118.43 +9.02) reported first quarter earnings of $0.15 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.06 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.09, while revenues rose 100.7% year/year to $188.5 million versus the $177.75 mln consensus. Revenue from Hiring Solutions products totaled $102.6 million, an increase of 121% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Hiring Solutions revenue represented 54% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 49% in the first quarter of 2011. The company issued upside guidance for the second quarter with revenues of $210-215 million versus the $205.40 million versus the consensus, with adjusted EBITDA of $40-42 million, may not compare to $29 million ests. The company issued upside guidance for fiscal year 2012 with raised revenues to $880-900 million from $840-860 million versus the $864.31 million consensus and raised adjusted EBITDA to $170-175 mln from $155-165 millon versus estimates near $170 million.

RealPage (RP $16.29 -1.01) reported fourth quarter earnings of $0.10 per share, excluding non-recurring items, in-line with the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.10, while revenues rose 31.4% year/year to $71.1 million versus the $74.2 mln consensus. The company issued downside guidance for the first quarter with EPS of $0.10, excluding non-recurring items, versus the $0.11 consensus and revenues of $73-74 million versus the $76.75 million consensus. The company issued in-line guidance for fiscal year 2012 with EPS of $0.46-0.49 versus the $0.49 consensus and revenues of $320-330 million versus the $329.90 million consensus.

Digital River (DRIV $16.70 -1.89) reported first quarter earnings of $0.30 per share, $0.01 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.29, while revenues rose 4.3% year/year to $102.4 million versus the $100.22 million consensus. The company issued downside guidance for the second quarter with EPS of $0.17-0.19 versus the $0.22 consensus with revenues of $92-94 million versus the $95.21 million Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. "While we are maintaining a slightly cautious outlook on the European economy, we continue to invest for the future, developing some great products in cloud-based subscriptions and building out our catalog of APIs to simplify the process of onboarding new clients. Our mission is to continually strengthen our position as the revenue growth experts in global cloud commerce."

Dolby Labs (DLB $44.30 +6.67) reported second quarter earnings of $0.91 per share, $0.11 better than the consensus of $0.80, while revenues rose 4.1% year/year to $260.3 million versus the $252.99 mln consensus. The company issued in-line guidance for fiscal year 2012 with EPS of $2.80-3.04 versus the $2.86 consensus and revenues of $910-960 million versus the $942.90 million Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. Microsoft (MSFT) will include Dolby Digital Plus 5.1-channel decoding and Dolby Digital two-channel encoding in Windows 8. Under this arrangement, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) generally will be required to directly license and pay Dolby a base royalty rate for the right to use the Dolby technologies included in Windows 8 and installed on PCs and tablets for online and file-based content. Dolby expects the majority of PCs to continue to ship with optical disc drives when Windows 8 is released and to include optical disc playback functionality. For devices that also include optical disc playback functionality, which will be enabled by independent software vendor (ISV) applications installed on devices running Windows 8, OEMs will be required to pay a higher per-unit rate. This higher rate is consistent with historical rates paid for the inclusion of Dolby disc playback software. Dolby expects to receive only one royalty payment per device containing these technologies. Dolby does not expect this agreement to affect its fiscal 2012 outlook because Windows 8 is not expected to ship until Dolby's fiscal 2013.

QLogic (QLGC $14.80 -2.06) reported fourth quarter earnings of $0.34 per share, $0.02 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.32, while revenues fell 11.3% year/year to $135.1 mln vs the $137.58 mln consensus.

09:17 am Microsoft resumed with a Buy at Stifel Nicolaus; tgt $38: . Stifel Nicolaus resumes coverage of MSFT with a Buy and sets target price at $38 saying while many investors have viewed MSFT as "dead money" and a "value trap" over the past few years, the firm believes the tides are finally changing and think the name is falling back into favor. They believe MSFT has plenty of legs remaining in several of its products (Office 2010, Windows 7, Kinect, etc.), has one of the most promising product cycles (Windows 8, Windows 8 Server, Office 12, etc.) in its history in front of it, and is levered to numerous secular trends (cloud computing, virtualization, big data, etc.), which should enable the company to outpace IT spending and outperform its peers for the foreseeable future.