Market briefing --- Matt (slow)
NYSE --- Deb (fast)
Nasdaq --- Bob (fast)
Economy news --- Mike (fast)
>> welcome to “world financial report.” i’m matt nesto. let’s start with the closing numbers for the day. the dow and the s&p little changed. really no move to speak of. the nasdaq, though, over 1%. the superlative that will stick in our minds is down for the fifth week out of the past six. volume also notable today. noticeably light, that is. 1.3 billion for the big board. and on to the nasdaq we go. only 1.5 billion shares. that’s about half a billion shares light, typically, up around two billion at the nasdaq. and we see the bonds here today, they were rising, the yields, of course, falling 4 poise 77% on the 10-year and some similar gains on the shorter end of the -- or the shorter bonds, if you will. if we look at the current sis, you’ll see a mixed picture in new york trade. your dollar buys less yen t. euro up versus the dollar. the pound down versus the dollar. deborah kostroun is at the big board with a wrap of the day and the week that was, quarter-to-date it’s been pretty tough, deb.
>> it really has, matt. as we kind of look at the week, the dow, s&p and the nasdaq all closing lower for a third straight week in tandem. also in today’s session, we had that c.p.i. report, not only was inflation a big concern today, but all this past week, along with interest rates and that c.p.i. actually coming in at an increase of .2%. but last month it was .5%. and so many traders had expected maybe we would see that c.p.i. number coming in a little bit more than expected and that led many interest rate-sensitive stocks because the bond market rallied. the bond market rallied because they kind of expected the c.p.i. to be a little bit more than that .2% gean. so, interest rate sensitive stocks were up. technology stock, a drag on the s&p 500 as dell’s earnings report really did little to incite the market . and for the week, a pivotal week for the dow jones industrial average. not only the dow, the s&p and the nasdaq, we started out monday’s trades with all the major averages sitting at their lowest close for 2004. the dow at its lowest close on monday, 9990. at this point, just about 20 points away from that. and on wednesday, we saw our lowest intraday level for 2004 in the dow, 9 852 and that’s significant because the dow was able to bounce off that 9 9 52 area. we haven’t tested it again. it will be very interesting. also the dow hovering around the 200-day moving average. that’s what we’ve been seeing all this past week. one of the things we will be watching for next week to see if we can get well above that level. also, as we get into next week, those economic reports, we’ll be watching those rather closely as well. we have manufacturing, housing starts and building permits coming up and, of course t initial jobless claims thursday. back to you.
>> deborah kostroun, thanks as always. appreciate it. we talk about the nasdaq, it was the clear loser on the day. bob bowdon has the wrapup from the nasdaq market site in times square.
>> when 80 of the nasdaq 100 stocks are down, you know you have a lower session and that was the case on this friday of trading. we begin with dell, probably the biggest story of the day, though. shares down 3% after the company gave its earnings after the close of trading thursday and they issued a forecast, that although $100 million better than expected, that was not good enough and its gross margins came in at 18% for the last quarter compared to 18.3% for the year before. doesn’t sound like a big miss, but investors not liking the sound of it. it was also downgraded by cibc to sector-perform. but moving on, b.e.a. systems, that was the biggest percentage loser in the nasdaq 100 by far. the stock down 23% in one session after its revenue came in just 2% shy of what analysts were expecting and it got six downgrades. b.e.a. systems downgraded by u.b.s., piper jaffray, key bank, prudential, kauffman brothers. there was one firm that upgraded shares, la czar frare there was something of a 5-to-1 downgrade-upgrade ratio for b.e.a. systems. and we had news in the router market . that hurting shares of juniper networks and cisco. three japanese companies said they will join―they didn’t say it, but according to people familiar with the situation, these three companies will jointly develop next-generation internet router equipment that will compete with the equipment from cisco and juniper networks. and so those shares were down. that is cisco and juniper networks were down on the day. moving on, taking a look at some of the big-cap nasdaq stocks, they were really all down on the day. look at intel, oracle, mutual fund, qualcomm, all those stocks down between .8% and 2.5% on the day. and one other little group to show you, chinese internet stocks, which had been the darling of 2003, the darling stocks were loser. china.com said that first quarter net income was four cents a share, that below the five to six-cent estimate that some analysts were looking for. that stock hit low as well. sinacorp and soho.com. a down day, a down month and down year-to-date.
>> that’s a bit of a downer, if you don’t say so. a wrapup of today’s economic news, we’ll bring in michael mckee, what’s down in washington today. mike? housing and education both higher last month and prices paid by american consumers rose .2% in april, which was less than expected in march. what can we take from that?
>> well, we can take that some people are talk about the federal reserve raising interest rates sooner than expected. although today’s news did help the bond market because it wasn’t quite as bad on inflation as people thought. the forecast had been for a .3% gain for the consumer price index. we only got .2%. and it was down from the half percent gain we saw in march. excluding food and energy, the so-called core index rose a little more, though, up .3%. consumer prices minus food and energy, 1.8% higher than in april of last year. that’s the biggest year-over-year increase since january 2003 and that’s why some economists, including those at lehman brothers and deutsche bank, are now predicting the federal reserve will start raising their benchmark interest rate next month.
>> yeah, i think that if the fed doesn’t start reacting to the inflation news, they have a bit of a credibility problem, frankly, in the markets . two months in a row of very strong core c.p.i. readings, labor market improving nicely, they’re kind of running out of excuses to remain on the sidelines.
>> the fed did report today that industrial production rose .9% in april, the seventh increase in eight months. work at fact toirs, that accounts for about 90% of production, rose .7% in april. we saw business equipment up half a percent. the university of michigan’s preliminary may consumer sentiment index, meanwhile, held steady this month at 94.2. the expectation index falling from 85.8 from 87.3, while the current conditions index rose from 107.2. matt?
>> thank you very much, appreciate it and have a great weekend. crude prices extended their day today to finish at a record high for at least the 20 years that that future contract has been trading. the increase comes as refineries process oil at close to their capacity to meet rising demand for gasoline. earlier this week, the department of energy said gasoline supplies falling, that combined with record consumption, is leading to consumers about the sum earth driving season. summer driving season. crude closed up at $41.38 a barrel, up more than 3.5% for the week. unleed gasoline rose 5%, closing for the week at $1.41 a gallon. that, too, a record for the gasoline futures contract. well, we’ve taken the liberty to put together a couple of graphics, as we like to do on the bloomberg. and take a look at actually the price of oil and also the -- thousand that compares with those inventory numbers. we put together an intraday chart. this is interesting. the redline was the previous record high. you can see the up and down level. there’s really a tug-of-war in terms of how much higher the price of oil can go. but once again, inching higher for today, up 30 cents a barrel, you can see a few points during the day there was a giveback in that marketplace. another chart that’s also equally interesting, this is going to give you a longer term look at the price of oil and it’s going to show the recent run-up in the price. i’m going back from may of last year, when we were at $25 a barrel. we’re now up, of course, above $40. but what’s also important to look at is what’s known as the open interest, which is essentially how much speculation, how many people are getting involved in this type of investment. and what you can see is this green average line essentially drifting higher ever so slightly as more people are getting involved. now yesterday we had talked also about rising inventories and -- or falling inventories, working inversely or opposite of the price of oil. and it’s―in one way to sum it up is essentially that they’re moving in opposite directions. what you’re seeing here, the white line is the inventory number. you can see the sharp rebound we’ve seen from the low in january at the same time prices rising as well. so, these two―these two statistics tend to move in opposite directions. secretary of state colin powell says a failure of leadership might have add part in the abuse of iraqi prisoners. we’ll talk more about that after this.
