From Briefing.com: 4:20 pm : The major averages ended today's quiet session on a mixed note. The S&P 500 shed 0.2% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.2%.
After spiking to new record highs yesterday, the Dow, S&P 500 and Russell 2000 spent the entire session in a slow retreat off their opening levels. Seven of ten sectors finished in the red while industrials (+0.1%), technology (+0.2%), and discretionary shares (+0.01%) posted modest gains.
The discretionary sector received support from retailers as the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT 82.82, +0.18) added 0.2%. Meanwhile, homebuilders lagged across the board as rates trended higher. The iShares Dow Jones US Home Construction ETF (ITB 23.12, -0.28) fell 1.2% after jumping 4.8% yesterday.
Elsewhere, the industrial sector displayed relative strength with transports contributing to the gain. The Dow Jones Transportation Average added 0.3%. Dow component Boeing (BA 119.04, +0.64) also outperformed, rising 0.5%, after German airline Lufthansa chose the 777X for its future long-haul fleet.
Also of note, the technology sector ended modestly higher with the top sector component, Apple (AAPL 472.30, +7.62), advancing 1.6%. On the earnings front, Oracle (ORCL 33.89, +0.02) added 0.1% after reporting a bottom-line beat on below-consensus revenue. In addition, the company guided its second quarter earnings and revenue on the low end of consensus expectations.
The outperformance of technology kept the Nasdaq in positive territory through most of the session. However, biotechnology held the index back from additional gains as the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB 211.33, +0.14) ended little changed.
Countercyclical sectors lagged across the board as consumer staples, health care, telecom services, and utilities lost between 0.3% and 0.5%.
Treasuries saw some moderate selling following yesterday's aggressive bid. The benchmark 10-yr yield added four basis points to 2.75%.
Despite relatively narrow trading ranges, today's session saw above average participation as 738 million shares traded hands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
In today's economic data, technical problems continued causing biases in the initial claims number. Weekly initial claims increased to 309,000 from an upwardly revised 294,000 (from 292,000). Computer glitches in California and Nevada prevented many claimants from filing for unemployment benefits. Those problems created a backlog of filings, which resulted in a temporarily lower initial claims level. The Department of Labor expects the backlog to be processed over the next week or two before the claims level returns to normal.
When the biases are gone, we expect the initial claims level to settle back to its previous 330,000 trend.
August existing home sales increased to 5.48 million from July's unrevised 5.39 million. The Briefing.com consensus expected sales to slip to 5.30 million. Sales in August were the strongest since February 2007 when 5.79 million existing home sales were sold. Unfortunately, the National Association of Realtors does not believe sales will continue at this level through the fall.
A spike in mortgage rates caught potential buyers by surprise. As a result, buyers rushed into the market to take advantage of relatively low rates before they went higher. This caused a temporary surge in demand and sales were pulled forward.
The Philadelphia Fed's Business Outlook increased to 22.3 in September, its strongest level since March 2011, from 9.3 in August. The Briefing.com consensus expected the index to fall to 9.0.
Separately, the current account deficit for the second quarter totaled $98.9 billion, which was narrower than the $100.0 billion deficit that had been broadly anticipated.
There is no economic data of note on tomorrow's calendar.DJ30 -40.39 NASDAQ +5.74 SP500 -3.18 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1137/1.73 bln/1367 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1259/738.5 mln/1765
3:35 pm :
Oct crude oil pulled back from its session high of $108.66 per barrel and slipped into negative territory as reports indicated that Libyan crude oil production is on the road to recovery with the reopening of the El Feel and Sharara oil fields. The energy component brushed a session low of $106.17 per barrel moments before settling with a 1.7% loss at $106.26 per barrel
Oct natural gas popped to a session high of $3.82 per MMBtu on bullish inventory data that showed a build of 46 bcf when a build of 55-56 bcf was anticipated. Prices reversed, however, and fell as low as $3.68 per MMBtu in afternoon floor trade. Natural gas eventually settled with a 0.3% gain at $3.72 per MMBtu
Precious metals held on to yesterday's gains that came on the 14:00 ET FOMC decision to withhold tapering of its stimulus program. The announcement was made after floor trade in gold, silver, and copper had ended and sent Dec gold and Dec silver rallying sharply in yesterday's afternoon electronic trade
Both metals traded in a consolidative fashion today, with gold trading near the $1370.00 per ounce level and silver rising to a session high of $23.44 per ounce in late morning floor action. Gold settled at $1369.10 per ounce and silver settled at $23.29 per ounce, booking respective gains of 4.7% and 7.9% as of yesterday's pit close.
4:36PM Texas Instruments increases quarterly dividend by 7% to $0.30 from $0.28 per share (TXN) 40.80 -0.05 :
Large Cap Gainers
TSLA (177.67 +6.89%): Heard tgt raised to $200 from $160 at Deutsche Bank; heard Northland Securities making positive comments on TSLA.
A (51.39 +4.2%): Co to separate into two public companies; combined its Life Sciences and Diagnostics businesses; upgraded (timing unclear) to Buy from Neutral at Janney.
PSX (58.26 +1.76%): Value investor Eagle Capital's Meryl Witmer discussed her long position in the stock.
Large Cap Losers
ING (11.81 -4.53%): Co has not set final capital levels for planned European insurance unit IPO, according to reports.
CAG (30.75 -4.12%): Reported EPS in-line with preannouncement; missed on revs; guided Q2 EPS below consensus; reaffirmed FY14 EPS guidance (lowered last week).
GIS (48.74 -2.8%): Downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Wells Fargo.
Mid Cap Gainers
RAD (4.28 +15.36%): Beat on EPS by $0.07, reported revs in-line; raised FY14 guidance.
GRPN (12.59 +9%): Upgraded to Buy at Stifel; tgt $16.
ISIS (34.2 +7.55%): Reported follow-up data from iSIS-SMN Rx Phase 1 study in children with spinal muscular atrophy; improvements in muscle function continue to be observed up to fourteen months after a single dose.
Mid Cap Losers
PIR (21.04 -10.84%): Missed on EPS by $0.04, missed on revs; lowered FY14 EPS below consensus, guided revs in-line.
CLC (53.25 -7.41%): Beat on EPS by $0.01, missed on revs; guided FY13 EPS below consensus.
BPOP (27.04 -7.05%): Downgraded to Underweight from Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley; tgt to $25 from $32.
SanDisk (SNDK) announced that the iNAND Extreme embedded flash drive has been optimized to provide advanced digital storage in tablets powered by the new 22nm Intel Atom system-on-a-chip introduced by Intel (INTC) last week.
7:30AM Agilent to separate into two public companies; spinoff is not anticipated to impact co's guidance for fiscal year 2013 (A) 49.32 : Co announced plans to separate into two publicly traded companies: one in life sciences, diagnostics and applied markets (LDA) that will retain the Agilent name, and the other that will be comprised of Agilent's current portfolio of electronic measurement (EM) products. The separation is expected to occur through a tax-free pro rata spinoff of the EM company to Agilent shareholders.
New Agilent's FY13 est revs are $3.9 bln. It is expected that the new Agilent will continue to pay a dividend at least at the present yield. The new EM co's FY13 est revs are $2.9 bln. The EM company initially is not expected to pay a dividend. The spinoff is not anticipated to impact Agilent's guidance for fiscal year 2013. The co is expected to incur one-time charges related to the transaction during the periods preceding the separation, to be quantified at a later date.
Microsemi (MSCC) and Cryptography Research, a division of Rambus (RMBS), announced an agreement under which CRI will provide Microsemi access to CRI's secure semiconductor intellectual property.
7:03AM Veeco Instruments signs agreement to acquire privately held Synos Technology; initial purchase price is $70 mln; expected to be dilutive to Veeco in 2014 and solidly accretive in 2015 (VECO) 35.30 : Co signed an agreement to acquire privately held Synos Technology. Synos designs and manufactures Fast Array Scanning Atomic Layer Deposition systems that are enabling the production of flexible organic light-emitting diode displays for mobile devices. The initial purchase price is $70 million. Synos shareholders will receive additional payments upon the achievement of future performance milestones, with maximum potential consideration for the transaction of $185 million. The merger is scheduled to close in the fourth quarter of 2013. Synos is currently expected to be dilutive to Veeco in 2014 and solidly accretive in 2015.
07:41 am Oracle shares fall 2% following weaker than expected guidance
Oracle (ORCL $33.22 -0.65) reported first quarter earnings of $0.59 per share, excluding non-recurring items, which is better than expected, while revenues rose 2.1% year/year to $8.38 billion which is below expectations.
Non-GAAP new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions revenue growth +4% vs. +0-8% guidance.
Both GAAP and non-GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 7% to $4.4 billion. Hardware systems products revenues were $669 million. Non-GAAP operating income was up 4% to $3.7 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 45%. Engineered systems had its best ever Q1 in terms of unit sales, growing over 60% compared with the same quarter last year. New software license results were especially strong in the Americas, which saw 15% growth in constant currency. Next week at Oracle OpenWorld, we will announce the In-Memory Option for the Oracle database. Virtually every existing application that runs on top of the Oracle database will run dramatically faster by simply turning on the new In-Memory feature. Our customers don't have to make any changes to their applications whatsoever; they simply flip on the in-memory switch, and the Oracle database immediately starts scanning data at a rate of billions or tens of billions of rows per second."
The company sees Q2 adjusted EPS of $0.64-0.69 which is in line with consensus sees revenue growth of -1% to +2% which is below expectations.
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