Market briefing---Mike (medium)
NYSE---Deb (fast)
>> welcome back to “world financial report”. i’m michael mckee. recapping the day on wall street an up day on low volume. the dow jones industrial average finishing 90 points higher on the day. the s&p up by about seven. nasdaq stocks finished higher by 18 points, pushing the index to its highest since january 31st of 2002. most actives on the new york stock exchange, general electric motorola which reported better-than-expected earnings% -ptoday, and lucent t bond market closed for the columbus day holiday. a check on currency trading, however, showed the dollar at this hour down against the yen, and the euro and the pound, all its major trading partners as a new trading day begins in asia. the trend apparently is that things are moving higher in the markets. deborah kostroun at the big board is pushing them up. deborah kostroun. how are you doing.
>> doing well. and in fact, mike, we have seen this market, the trend higher since the low on march 11th. we are looking at some incredible gains. and in fact what we saw in today’s session, very similar to what we saw last week, the dow, the s&p, even the nasdaq getting to their highest level in 16 months or even more when you look at the nasdaq. if you take a look at the dow since the low on march 11th, very impressive gains, up 30%. dow transports up 48%. and the s&p 500 up 33%. in addition, since the low on march 11th, you also have semiconductors performing quite well. look at that, up 68%. russell 2000 at 52%. and the s&p mid-cap, that is also supposed to be up 41%. wilshire 5000 up 34%, and the cyclicals up 55%. very interesting we have the cyclicals up, because cyclicals typically do well when we are looking at an economy that is increasing, and that is obviously what the market is really kind of telling us. obviously you have a lot of people that say that the stock market is pretty much a six-month indicator for the economy, that the economy will catch up to the market. and obviously, earnings a pretty big part of that picture as well. tomorrow we are going to be getting more earnings. about 1/3 of the companies in the s&p 500 will be reporting their earnings just this week. tomorrow we are going to be hearing from f.d.c., also state street, forest labs and also eaton, eaton among some of the manufacturers that have been performing quite well. you can see how they performed in today’s session. also as we talked about today’s session, motorola, that was kind of the impetuous that helped things out today, reporting those better-than-expected earnings, saying the fourth quarter also looking pretty good. that helping out the sentiment to help push the markets higher. in addition, lehman upgrading some software stocks . financial stocks leading. and remember that financials comprise 1/5 of the s&p 500. so when you have financials performing well, generally you have the whole market performing well. oil also lagging just a little bit. motorola you can see the gains that we saw in today’s session, up eight cents. financials, we were talking about the financials rising. all the financials on this list hitting 52-week highs in today’s session. merrill lynch also reporting their earnings as we start out tomorrow’s session. oil services. one of the few areas of the market that didn’t perform all that well, that philadelphia oil service next, one of the laggards. also insurers performing quite well, even though it looks like they are going to have to pay $75 million for the blackout for business loss, also for property damage, even though the blackout cost businesses about $6 billion. obviously it’s hard to assess that. but the insurers still performing quite well. airlines, we are also going to be getting earnings from delta airlines, but many airlines performing quite well today. back to you in the studio, mike.
>> deborah kostroun. as deb mentioned, we are in the thick of earnings season. last week, 43 companies on the s&p 500 reported third quarter results. according to thomson financial 60% have beaten analysts’ expectations. 35% have matched and 5% have misestimates. approximately 115 s&p companies are scheduled to announce earnings this week on tuesday. merrill lynch is expected to post a 16% rise in third quarter profit. the continued stock market rally predicted to boost revenue at the company’s retail brokerage and investment banking divisions. merrill shares are up 17% in the past three months, outperforming competitors, including lehman brothers, bear sterps and goldman sachs. bank of america also reports tomorrow. wall street expecting profits at the nation’s third biggest bank to rise 16% from a year ago. thanks to increased earnings from mortgage lending. after the bell ip telex pekted to report third quarter profit more than doubled to $23 cents a share. investors say the computer chipmaker is benefitting as consumers purchased more notebook computers.
>> on wednesday general motors is expected to report quarterly profits of 66 cents a share compared with a loss in the same period a year ago when g.m. wrote down its investment in italy’s fiat auto. investors are focusing on whether the world’s largest automaker can increase profits in north america as the same time as it uses bigger incentives to boost demand. also on wednesday i.b.m. expected to report third quarter profit of $1.02 a share on sales of 21.8 billion. investors will be looking at whether the recent pickup on spending in computer technology is finally starting to speed up growth at i.b.m. services, software and chip businesses. thursday it’s coca-cola’s turn. forecasts of profit rose 16%, a heat wave in europe helped earnings at the world’s largest soft drink maker. coke’s sales have risen less than 1% annually the past five years while pepsi’s have risen 4%. ebay also reports thursday. last week the web auctioneer’s shares closed at their highest since the record set during the height of the internet bubble more than threes ago. analysts expect profit to rise more than 60% in the third quarter in ebay as revenues advance 80%. gannett, the biggest u.s. newspaper publisher set to report their quarterly earnings reports tomorrow before the bell. we’ll look at what wall street is expecting when we talk with ed adarino.
