From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : The stock market opened trade with a gain of about 1%, but by session’s end it fell to a flat finish.
A decision by China's central bank to trim its benchmark interest rate helped perpetuate a positive tone among market participants, who bid stocks up in the prior session for the S&P 500’s best one-day bounce since December. Sentiment was also helped by the belief that efforts will be made to improve banking and financial conditions in Spain and that the Fed will take steps further stimulate the domestic economy.
An in-line weekly initial jobless claims count of 377,000 did little to disrupt the positive tone ahead of the open. However, there was some disappointment associated with continuing claims, which climbed to about 3.29 million from roughly 3.26 million.
Stocks were knocked down from their early perch by a flurry of selling that came after Fed Chairman Bernanke failed to hint at plans for further quantitative easing in the immediate future during his speech before Congress.
Stocks attempted to gradually reclaim gains. From time to time the effort was interrupted by the dollar’s attempts to undo its loss. By session’s end it was down just 0.1% against a basket of major foreign currencies. The euro ended the day at the unchanged mark after it had moved up to a weekly high this morning. Despite recent relief, many pundits remain concerned that the euro will be weighed down by the persistently precarious conditions in the eurozone, most notably in Greece and Spain. Spain held a successful debt auction earlier today, but had its debt rating downgraded to BBB from A afterward.
The broad market’s afternoon flush left the Nasdaq to suffer a sizable loss. It was hurt by weakness among large-cap Tech issues. Blue chips seemed to help prop up the Dow during the day. The broad-based S&P 500 settled at the neutral line, unable to extend its advance to a third straight day.
Up by about 1% or more in the early going, Energy and Financials had been sources of strength, but both rolled over right alongside the rest of the market. Telecom stocks were clipped again, leaving the defensive-oriented sector to suffer a 0.7% loss.
Corporate news flow was limited, but consumer electronics retailer Best Buy (BBY 19.70, -0.19) announced this morning that Chairman and Founder Richard Schulze has resigned from the Board to explore options for his 20% stake in the company. Effective immediately, Hatim Tyabji will assume the Chairman role after serving as Chairman of the Audit Committee.
Advancing Sectors: Materials +0.2%, Consumer Staples +0.2%, Energy +0.2%, Industrials +0.6%, Utilities +0.7%
Unchanged: Health Care
Declining Sectors: Consumer Discretionary -0.1%, Financials -0.2%, Tech -0.4%, Telecom -0.7%DJ30 +46.17 NASDAQ -13.70 NQ100 -0.4% R2K -0.6% SP400 -0.5% SP500 -0.14 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1017/1.63 bln/1481 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1389/854 mln/1635
4:16PM Altera reaffirms Q2 rev guidance in business update (ALTR) 33.01 -0.76 : Co sees sequential revenue growth for the second quarter is expected to be in line with the company's previous guidance for growth of 14 percent to 18 percent from the first quarter -- equates to ~$437.5-452.8 mln vs $445.91 mln consensus. Altera's 40-nm and 28-nm products will be up strongly from first quarter levels. As previously expected, growth will be broad across most of the company's vertical markets.
9:38AM Skyworks firmer off the open, approaches its 52-wk high from March at 29.01 -- session high 28.96 (SWKS) 28.86 +0.46 :
Advanced Energy Industries (AEIS) announced that its inverter, the AE 500, has been successfully commissioned at one of 13 projects, totaling 4.5MW, developed by American Clean Energy at Toms River Regional School District in Ocean County, N.J.
HP (HPQ) announced that the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill., is using HP Thin Client technology supported by HP ProLiant blade servers and HP storage with virtualization software.
Acacia Research (ACTG) announced that its DRAM Memory Technologies subsidiary has entered into a settlement agreement with Etron Technology regarding patents related to double data rate SDRAM devices. The settlement agreement resolves litigation that was pending in the Central District of California.
Phoenix Technologies announced it has signed an agreement with Intel (INTC) to be its collaborative partner for BIOS. The two companies will jointly develop the new reference UEFI firmware for the Intel code base.
Needham downgrades Juniper Networks (JNPR $17.15 -0.33) to Hold from Buy saying they believe Juniper is a solid company with respectable growth prospects in a sector that is at risk of considerable disruption. Routing and Enterprise Switching markets are likely to undergo fundamental change as networks topologies shift to adapt to virtualization, cloud services and the integration of service provider routing with the optical transport layer. Firm says while they think Juniper can continue to grow as this transition occurs, they are concerned about the trajectory of margins and think investors will pressure valuation in the data plane networking companies as risk increases.
10:26 am S&P Technology sector trading higher along with the overall market
The tech sector is trading higher today, inline with marginal gains in the broader market. Semiconductors are also showing slight relative weakness with the Philly Semi Index trading 0.1% lower. STM (+2.3%) is a notable leader in that chip index, while VECO (-2.4%) lags. Among other major indices, the SPY is trading 0.4% higher today, while the QQQ is up 0.3% and the NASDAQ is trading 0.2% higher on the session. Among tech bellwethers, AAPL (+2.2%) is showing notable strength.
In earnings last night, SEAC (-3.7%) posted a Q1 earnings and revenue miss, while VRNT (+4.2%) reported a quarterly beat. In news, CACI (+10.4%) announced a new share repurchase program, its CEO will retire, and offered revised guidance. Virgin Mobile USA; S (+0.7%) announced it will offer Apple's AAPL (+0.4%) iPhone to its prepaid customers beginning Friday, June 29. Also, ATVI (-2.9%) is trading lower following reports out that VIVEF (0.0%) is considering sale of its stake in ATVI.
Among notable analyst upgrades this morning, Oppenheimer upgrades SINA (+2.9%) to Outperform and CACI (+10.4%) was upgraded to Buy at Lazard. While in downgrades, JNPR (-3.8%) was downgraded to Hold at Needham. CMTL (-0.1%) is the only notable name in tech scheduled to report quarterly results today after the close.
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