Market briefing---Lane (medium)
NYSE---Deb (fast)
Nasdaq---Anthony (slow)
>> welcome to “world financial report”. i am bob bowden. well, stock benchmarks bounced between gains and losses. investors saw share prices already at a peak on the prospect of accelerating earnings growth this year. let’s get to the closing numbers. we saw the dow was down by 18 points to 9,266, s&p down two points to 996, the nasdaq up 4.6 to 1,735 on the day. checking volume, deborah kostroun told you a while ago volume was light on the nyse, coming in at 1.28 billion shares. there you see advancers beating declines by 17 to 15. checking over the nasdaq, volume 1.5 billion shares, that’s where advancers beat declines, as you see, by a ratio of about 9:6, which would be about 3:2. wilshire 5000, virtually unchanged on the day at 9,596. moving on, checking bonds. treasuries as we said fell, pushing yields to the highest since december, as the federal government said it would borrow a record amount to help finance the expanding deficit. you see the yield on the 10-year up to 4.28%. the price down 26/32 on the day. right at the close it was down over a point, but it gained a little ground since. moving on to currencies, i should say the shorter end of the curve there, also the same action, you see prices down 13 sln 32 and 7/32. the dollar fell slightly on the yen, 119.41 yen equaling $1 on the day. and we see the dollar gained against the euro/dollar. the euro/dollar virtually unchanged, $1.1496, very little movement in currencies. healthcare stocks posted robust gains in today’s session. deborah kostroun is at the big board with more on today’s action.
>> in fact that is right, bob. we did see many of the healthcare stocks performing quite well, along with the telecom names. morgan stanley h.m.o. index, one of the best individual performers in today’s session. many of those h.m.o. stocks performing quite well. in addition to that, many other healthcare stocks doing quite well in today’s session. a little bit avenue news item on many of those, like humana. humana actually coming out with their second quarter earnings earning 37 cents a share, a little better than the thompson financial estimate of 37 cents. triad hospitals, another big gainer. their second quarter net income was 51 cents a share. that also beating the thompson financial estimate by two cents. so we did see some of the healthcare stocks performing quite well in today’s session. drug stocks among some of the losers. remember that johnson & johnson and also merck, some of the biggest laggards in the dow jones industrial average. so we did see some of the drug stocks are. in addition to drug stocks , we also saw, obviously, the credit card companies a little bit lower in today’s session as well. american express. and in fact, american express saying some of the things that mbna said last week. that was that their loan losses are continue tog decline, though american express really caused a lot of gyrations in the market, at least at one point. remember, the pretty light volume really added up to the up and down market that we saw in today’s session. angel mada, head trader at legg mason. he said we started the day on a positive note due to european markets. but today turned out to be a quiet day. many traders are on vacation and markets hit a crossroads because money managers must make decisions now. he says they are sitting on a lot of cash and they don’t want to miss the boat, even if they have to decide on the economic data in earnings, if they’ve convinced them the market will rise. remember, tomorrow we do have consumer confidence report coming out. that is expected to rise. also on friday we have the employment data report, and many traders actually talking about that, too, to maybe provide us a little direction in the summer doldrums in the trading season where it seems to have pretty light volume, bob. now back to you.
>> thank you, deborah. we’ve never had summer doldrums when deborah kostroun is reporting. moving on, american express has begun its conference call. earlier this afternoon the nation’s fourth largest credit card i sure said its credit card unit boosted second quarter earnings to a record, net income increasing 12% to 59 cents a share, compared with 51 cents the year before, and exceeds the estimate of analysts’ surveyed by thompson financial by two cents a share. american express led by c.e.o. ken shineau who expand today credit card unit who got a boost in increase in credit card borrowing and decline in loan losses. he said despite the losses from the iraq war we delivered double digit growth in card billings and membership. the company’s spending per card rose 7%, according to analysts. an analyst at legg mason says some of the increased in charge volumes and revenue result from favorable currency translation from overseas. he says the quarter is still better than i thought. lehman analyst bruce harting says though some consumers have spent money from refinancing more gangs instead of using credit, american express continues to outpace the credit card industry’s growth rate by 4 person to 5%.
>> they’ve been tracking a little better than that. a lot of good offers to people, you know, using both the delta card offer as well as the blue card offer. and going back to their traditional card base, and looking for ways to mix, you know, get bigger product mix or diversify more products across their existing base. so again, with the exception of the refi problem, they have been holding their own in that area.
>> looking ahead, american express expects its 2003 earnings before an accounting charge to exceed analysts estimates of $2.26 a share. the company saying earnings are not likely to be higher than $2.29 a share, because the company plans to invest more on its existing operations. american express shares are up 28% year to date. stock crows closed 13r7b9 lower, a little over that, a little over 1% lower today, after rallying 3% on friday ahead of the earnings report. while analysts expected a strong quarterly report, more than half the analysts surveyed by bloomberg rate the stock a hold or a sell. they say valuation is a key concern. going into today, american express shares are trading at 20 times this year’s estimated earnings. that’s above the s&p 500 and rivals citigroup and j.p. morgan chase. when we come back, candle charts have been used for centuries to detect trends in the market. when we come back we’ll shed some light on what this type of analysis says about stocks and bonds right now. we’ll be talking with steve nisen of handle charts.com.
