Market briefing --- Bob (fast)
NYSE --- Julie (slow)
Nasdaq --- June (slow)
welcome to “world financial report.”i’m bob bowden.the markets had election certainty. president bush has another four years in the white house after beating democratic senator john kerry. that led to buying at the open. the benchmark stock market indexes closed the day up 1%. you can see the dow, s&p and nasdaq, all three up around the 1% level. the currency markets rabbit reacting to the idea of a second bush term. the prospect for continued higher deficits had been weighing on the dollar today. does bush’s win mean a weaker dollar? consider the following remarks from jim o’neill with goldman sachs. let’s look at the chart of the euro against the dollar to see where we have come and look at the reaction today. this is the euro rising in the last two months or so and this higher euro up to the $1.28 level, that means a lower dollar, higher euro, lower dollar. moving on to the japanese yen chart, and this is a reverse chart and it’s the dollar against the yen and the yen is now 106.19 to the dollar, signaling a weaker dollar. moving to treasuries, prices moving down and yields backing up. the yield on the benchmark 10-year note has risen to a one-month high. you see at 4.07% and the move in price there, down almost a quarter of a point, down 7/32 for the are 10-year. investors speculate the u.s. government needs to borrow more money to finance the record bunet deficit. earlier, we spoke with bill gross, chief investment officer of pimco ask manager of the world’s largest bond fund. he told us why he’s investing in things other than treasuries.
>> our portfolios have been defensive from the standpoint of investing in german bunds as opposed to u.s. treasuries. if you have the potential of less buying from the chinese and japanese at some point down the road and the potential for the federal reserve to be more aggressive than what we see with the e.c.b., then the lagical choice with nearly the same yields is the german bund.
>> coming up in the next half hour, you’ll hear what bill gross is saying about inflation, interest rates and market strategy. drug and defense stocks led the rally on optimism they’ll benefit from president bush’s re-election. here’s our report from julie hyman at the big board.
>> stocks peaked early in today’s session. the s&p 500 actually reached its highest in six months this morning. however, markets eroded earlier gains late in the session. the past couple of hours of the session, in fact. a couple of contributors with oil closing higher and traders saying we had a refocus on the fundamentals. with the election behind us, although people have been positive about a win for president bush, people are now focused on mixed fundamentals, which are earnings, which are slowing down, the economy, looking strong, and the high price of oil. volume falling off heading into the end of the session. this morning, it looked like we were on track to get 1.7 billion shares changing hands and at the end of the day was less than that. drug stocks really outpacing the gains we saw in the overall markets . some of the drug stocks you can see there winning. and this is because a bush win was seen as more positive for the industry, he wouldn’t impose as many price controls or possibly also more gen generics not coming into the market under president bush. an index of h.m.o.’s gaining, about 5.5%. the various h.m.o.’s doing very well. pacificare gaining 19% and defense stocks doing well today because president bush is seen as continuing a high level of defense spending. i’m julie hyman, bloomberg news, at the new york stock exchange.
>> qualcomm is out with its latest results. revenue came in below expectations in the fourth quarter. qualcomm also cut its profit and sales forecast for the current quarter. one analyst says the company is less certain. what they’ll earn in royalties from mobile phone technology. qualcomm reported 23 cents a share in the september quarter and sales came in at $1.12 billion. qualcomm shares were taking a hit in the after hours trading. i suppose still are. for details, we check with june grasso at the nasdaq marketsite.
>> qualcomm reported earnings after the close of trading and let’s see where it is now trading after hours, at $38.75. i want to correct a misstatement during my earlier report on qualcomm. it was briefly, earlier today, at a five-week low, not a five-year low and this stock came back from this level and closed at its only lowest since last week. drug stocks gained because senator kerry talked about expanding production of generic drugs and allowing cheaper drug imports so on president bush’s re-election, the nasdaq biotech index advanced led by amgen. biogen, gilead and kos pharmaceuticals was one of the highest percentage gainers on the nasdaq, reporting third-quarter earnings 20 cents better than estimates and revenue higher than analysts’ estimates. a different story for shares of companies that develop treatment based on using stem cells. they declined after john kerry conceded to president bush, who has limited stem cell research. there you see down stemcells, aastrom, and geron. looking at i.a.c. interactive, led the nasdaq 100 on positive earnings exceeding analysts’ estimates. the internet and television company is controlled by barry diller and said it increased sales of travel reservations on its websites, including expedia, hotels.com and hotwire.com. the telecommunications index was one of the worst performing groups at the nasdaq today. let’s look at research in motion, maker of the blackberry wireless email passenger pager was downgraded by u.b.s. securities to neutral, saying the forecast is volatile because the company is entering new markets with new products. i’m june grasso at the nasdaq marketsite in times square. back to you, bob bowden, in the studio.
>> thank you. appreciate that, june. moving on, shares of google crossed the $200 mark today less than three month of going public at $85 a share. the company raised $1.who billion during the initial public offering. the world’s most used internet search engine said last month third-quarter profit more than doubled as it sold more advertising. the stock trades at about 77 times the average analyst forecast for per-share profit this year. two big winemakersgating about ahead with their merger. robert mondavi agreed to be acquired by constellation brands for the company’s class a stock. constellation offered to purchase mondavi last month. still to come, oil prices turn on a dime. futures are back above $50 a barrel. we’ll tell you what fueled today’s gains.
