Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Market Summary 10-16-07

Index Last Change % Chg
DJ Industrials 13912.94 -71.86 -0.51%
Nasdaq Comp 2763.91 -16.14 -0.58%
S&P 500 1538.53 -10.18 -0.66%
DJ Wilshire 5K 15545.05 -103.16 -0.66%
Russell 2K 823.35 -6.01 -0.72%
Nasdaq 100 2151.14 -7.78 -0.36%

Issues NYSE Nasdaq Amex
Advancing 914 1,055 400
Declining 2,330 1,903 808
Unchanged 125 124 100
Total 3,369 3,082 1,308
New 52 Week High 78 63 39
New 52 Week Low 80 105 28
Total Volume 1,285,693,240 2,112,670,276 40,543,987
Advancing Vol 295,146,290 633,084,719 12,428,450
Declining Vol 983,668,950 1,451,882,524 26,842,637
Unchanged Vol 6,878,000 27,703,033 1,272,900

Futures Last Change
Crude Oil 87.42 1.29
Natural Gas, Jan 8.29 -0.043
Gold, Dec. 764.3 2.1

From Briefing.com:
Moving the Market Sector Watch
Crude oil surpasses $88 per barrel; closes at $87.61

LM Ericsson tempers third quarter outlook

Wells Fargo and other banks report disappointing earnings, hurt by rising credit losses
Strong: education services; broadcast & cable TV

Weak: homebuilding; auto; regional banks; construction & engineering; forest products; real estate mgmt. development; specialty consumer services; photo products; other diversified finl. services; construction materials




It was a bit of deja vu on Tuesday as rising oil prices and a weak financial sector (-1.9%) combined to knock the stock market for another loss. The difference from Monday was that the losses weren't as severe.

Oil prices topped $88 per barrel at their highs for the day before closing at $87.61 (+1.7%). Concerns about Turkey invading northern Iraq to strike the Kurds fueled the uptick in oil prices.

Once again, the surge in prices enabled the energy sector (+0.3%) to outperform. It didn't have any company on the winning side of things, though, as the remaining economic sectors finished with a loss.

Like Monday, the most influential drag was the financial sector, which was sent reeling following disappointing earnings reports from the likes of Wells Fargo (WFC 34.55, -1.40), KeyCorp (KEY 30.44, -1.91) and Regions Financial (RF 28.53, -0.60) that were accented with rising credit losses. Asset manager State Street (STT 74.68, +5.75) bucked the trend after easily surpassing analysts' consensus estimate for the third quarter, but its strength wasn't enough to overcome losses in the heavily-weighted banking complex.

Overall, the earnings reporting on Tuesday failed to live up to the market's expectations.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ 65.07, -0.58) topped estimates by $0.07; however, investors were unimpressed that net earnings actually slipped 7.7% in the third quarter.

LM Ericsson (ERIC 31.33, -9.60) issued a nasty earnings warning that hit its stock hard and took down many other technology issues ahead of a key batch of reports Tuesday night from IBM (IBM 119.60, +1.57), Intel (INTC 25.48, -0.27) and Yahoo! (YHOO 26.69, -1.17).

Homebuilder confidence fell to a record low in October and an update from D.R. Horton (DHI 12.86, -0.72) indicating net sales orders plunged 48% for the fourth quarter ended September 30th led to further selling of homebuilding stocks. Cautious commentary on the state of the housing sector from Fed Chairman Bernanke didn't help much either.

There wasn't a lot of economic data Tuesday. The Industrial Production report for September was the featured item. It showed a modest 0.1% increase for the month, but the trend in production is consistent with 2% real GDP growth and didn't change economic expectations.

In another release, it was reported that net foreign purchases of U.S. securities dropped by $69.3 billion in August, which marked the height of the credit market crisis. With the market rebounding sharply after the Fed rate cut in September, this number should show some solid improvement when the September report is released. It certainly didn't hurt the dollar Tuesday, which gained ground against a basket of other major currencies.

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