From Briefing.com: 4:20 pm : Equities finished today's session with firm gains and the S&P 500 settled higher by 0.8%. After starting the day on a positive note, the benchmark average spent the balance of the session in a six-point range.
An otherwise quiet session was interrupted by a brief morning stumble when Reuters cited a European lawmaker, who said the European parliament will push for depositors with more than EUR100,000 to face bail-ins under a new resolution law. The remark carried a similar tone to yesterday's comments from Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who hinted the framework of the Cypriot rescue package may be used again in the future.
Although the major averages ended firmly higher, defensive sectors were the clear winners while economically-sensitive groups trailed behind the broader market.
The health care space showed strength at the open, and led the S&P 500 throughout the day. In addition, consumer staples and utilities also found themselves in the top half of today's sector rankings.
Energy was the only economically-sensitive group which settled among the leaders. Crude oil contributed to the sector strength as the energy component climbed 1.5% to $96.26. Meanwhile, the SPDR Energy Select Sector (XLE 79.28, +0.83) ended higher by 1.1%.
Outside of energy, other cyclical sectors saw more limited gains. The consumer discretionary sector underperformed after February new home sales and March consumer confidence missed expectations.
New home sales in February hit an annualized rate of 411,000, which was down from January's revised rate of 431,000, and worse than the rate of 426,000 that had been broadly expected by the Briefing.com consensus. The news caused homebuilders to miss out on today's rally, and the iShares Dow Jones US Home Construction ETF (ITB 23.98, -0.05) settled lower by 0.2%.
Elsewhere, retailers underperformed after March consumer confidence slipped to 59.7 (66.9 Briefing.com consensus) from February's reading of 69.0. The SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT 70.29, +0.02) ended flat after being down as much as 0.6% intraday.
Also of note, producers of basic materials lagged after being the weakest performing group in each of the past three sessions. As a result, the SPDR Materials Select Sector ETF (XLB 39.04, +0.27) is down nearly 1.5% since last Wednesday's close. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has added five points in that same timeframe.
While the S&P 500 ended firmly higher, the Russell 2000 did not share that optimism. The small cap index spent the bulk of the day near its unchanged level before a late-afternoon bid contributed to a gain of 0.3%.
Today's volume was the second lowest of the year as just over 558 million shares changed hands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Looking back at the final sector rankings, health care (+1.2%), energy (+1.1%), utilities (+1.0%), and consumer staples (+0.9%) outperformed while industrials (+0.5%), consumer discretionary (+0.5%), and materials (+0.6%) lagged.
Reviewing today's remaining economic data, durable goods orders jumped 5.7% (Briefing.com consensus +3.8%) in February, led by a 21.7% increase in transportation equipment orders that totaled $74.4 billion. The improvement was paced by a 95.3% gain in nondefense aircraft and parts that flowed from a large pickup in orders at Boeing (BA 86.62, +1.77). Excluding transportation, orders declined 0.5% (Briefing.com consensus -0.2%).
The January Case-Shiller 20-city Home Price Index rose 8.1% while a 7.5% increase had been expected by the Briefing.com consensus. This follows the previous month's increase of 6.8%.
In tomorrow's economic news, the weekly MBA Mortgage Index will be reported at 7:00 ET and February pending home sales will be announced at 10:00 ET.
The U.S. Treasury will auction off $35 billion in 5-yr notes.DJ30 +111.90 NASDAQ +17.18 SP500 +12.08 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1422/1.40 bln/1015 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2067/558.3 mln/926
3:35 pm : Energy markets showed some solid gains today across the board with crude oil, natural gas, heating oil and RBOB gasoline futures all rising. In the precious metals space, however, losses continued to persist and both gold and silver closed lower.
Crude oil was in positive territory all session. The energy component extended gains into the close of floor trading and hit a new session one minute before the close at $96.45/barrel. Crude finished the day at $96.20/barrel, up 1.5%.
Natural gas futures rallied early/mid-morning to as much as $4.00/MMBtu. By the end of today's floor session, the May nat gas contract was 2.6% higher at $3.99/MMBtu.
May gold ended the day 0.6% lower at $1595.40/oz, while May silver declined 0.6% at $28.66/oz. May copper futures ultimately ended the day unchanged at $3.44/lb.DJ30 108.59 NASDAQ +15.64 SP500 +11.70 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1328/1219.2 mln/1123 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2011/401 mln/966
4:26PM Peregrine Semi files additional patent infringement action against RF Micro Devices (PSMI) 9.98 +0.18 : Co announced that it has filed a new lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging the infringement of Peregrine patented intellectual property relating to RFICs and switching technology by RF Micro Devices, Inc. (RFMD). The suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California claims that certain RFMD products infringe a newly issued Peregrine patent relating to silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology for RFICs. Peregrine seeks, in addition to damages, to permanently enjoin RFMD from further infringement. This new legal action is in addition to an existing lawsuit filed against RFMD in February 2012 and currently pending in U.S. District Court. The new patent, U.S. Patent 8,405,147, concerns Peregrine's HaRP invention that significantly improves the linearity and circuit performance of RF SOI devices. Peregrine believes the HaRP invention is instrumental for RF SOI devices to successfully meet the demanding RF requirements of advanced mobile wireless applications such as 4G LTE.
11:49AM LDK Solar announces second sale of shares to Fulai Investments (LDK) 1.12 -0.05 : Co announced the sale of the remainder 12,000,000 newly issued ordinary shares of LDK Solar to Fulai Investments Limited, at a purchase price of $1.28 per share with an aggregate purchase price of $15,360,000, pursuant to the share purchase agreement dated January 21, 2013, as amended and supplemented by the parties. Pursuant to the terms of the share purchase agreement, Fulai Investments Limited has the right to designate two non-executive directors to the LDK Solar board now that the parties have consummated the transactions pursuant to the agreement. The net proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes in LDK Solar's operations.
Analyst comments: RFMD +4.9% (upgraded to Outperform from Perform at Oppenheimer),
Analog Devices (ADI) introduced the CN0267 demonstration circuit for a loop powered HART (Highway Addressable Remote Transducer) enabled smart transmitter, for industrial applications that need to operate within a set 3.5-mA power budget.
3:49AM STMicroelectronics signs EUR 350 mln loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (STM) 7.92 :
11:18 am S&P Information Tech Sector trading higher by +0.55%
The tech sector is trading higher today, inline with gains in the broader market. Semiconductors are showing slight relative strength as well with the SOX trading 0.6% higher. Within the chip index, RBCN (+5.2%) is a notable standout. Among other major indices, the SPY is trading 0.4% higher today, while the QQQ and the NASDAQ are trading 0.2% higher on the session. Among tech bellwethers, INTC (+1.6%) is showing notable strength, while AAPL (-0.5%) is under pressure.
There were no tech earnings of note. In news, Carl Icahn has discussed a potential alliance with BX (+1.1%) in ongoing DELL (+0.2%) private equity talks. Among rumors, AMZN (+0.8%) and YHOO (+0.6%) may be interested in Hulu, according to reports. Among notable analyst upgrades this morning in the tech space, EA (+1.7%) was upgraded to Overweight at Piper, Oppenheimer upgraded RFMD (+9.2%) to Outperform, BSFT (+4.7%) was upgraded to Mkt Perform at Raymond James, and AMX (+1.5%) was upgraded to Buy at BofA/Merrill. Among downgrades, TI (-5.1%) was downgraded to Equal Weight at Barclays and BofA/Merrill. SAI (-0.4%) is the only notable name in tech scheduled to report quarterly results today after the close.
09:06 am KLA-Tencor initiated with a Buy at Needham; tgt $61: . Needham initiates KLAC with a Buy and price target of $61. As the leading supplier of process control and yield mgmt solutions to the semi industry, KLA benefits from the growing use of process control at the leading edge due to the increased process complexity and the introduction of 3D device architectures. As the industry recovers, they believe margin expansion will drive upside to consensus ests throughout CY2013. Despite having the highest gross and operating margins among its peers, KLAC is trading at a discount on P/E due in their view to the perceived risk of its high exposure to logic/foundry; they expect the valuation gap to close.
09:06 am RF Micro Device upgraded to Outperform at Oppenheimer; tgt $7: . Oppenheimer upgrades RFMD to Outperform from Perform and sets target price at $7 on higher ests. They believe the co's checkered history of execution has helped skew risk/reward favorably. Mgmt appears to have repositioned RFMD well, diversifying the co across products and customers. Sustained content increases look likely, including at top customers Samsung (SSNLF) and AAPL. Emerging high-end tuning/switching opportunities (and recent Galaxy S4 gains) are behind their increased ests. RFMD appears well positioned to capitalize on expanding RF complexity with its "systems-level" approach; they would be buyers here.
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