Market briefing --- Lane (medium)
Nasdaq--- Julie (slow)
Fedex --- Su (fast)
>> welcome back to world financial report. we see the dow jones industrial average was up by .8% as was the s&p. the nasdaq up 1.3%. we have news from standard and poors. gil yad sciences is going to be replacing bank one in the s&p 500. and at this point alliance data assistance will replace gilead in the s&p midcap 400. the important point here is gilead in after-hours trading up $1.70 because as it gets into the s&p 500 index there are a lot of fund managers out there who will have to buy their stock in order to keep their 500 stocks whole within the s&p 500 index funds that they manage. all right. the nasdaq had its highest close since june 8 rallying late in the session. julie hyman has details on today’s trading.
>> the nasdaq today in addition to closing at its highest level since june 8 also bumped up against the top of the trading range that we’ve been stuck in all month. it rose as high as 20.23 today before closing at about 20.21. a lot of traders have been complaining that we have been in this narrow trading range and haven’t bounced around more than about 3% for the whole month. this is the least volatile month, in fact, that we’ve seen on the nasdaq since at least back in 1996 so in quite some time. also today we did see the volume picking up just a bit as well which is probably good news in terms of the gains that we saw in today’s session. networking stocks a particular source of strength in today’s session extending yesterday’s gains. yesterday we had a couple pieces of news that really helped these networking stocks. s.b.c. planning to spend $6 billion in order to build out a new fiber optic network for cable television. on the other hand, we had sprint saying it’s going to be spending $1 billion to upgrade its wireless network so because of this wide range of networking stocks on the rise today, we had june per networks up 12%. j.d.s. up 6%. another fiber optic provider up 24%. tellabs up 5% and sienna up 13% this really providing a lot of the strength we saw particularly on the nasdaq 100 though we did see strength across the technology categories. computer related stocks did well. we saw semiconductors stocks do well also for example. some of the stocks that weren’t doing quite so well were the education stocks once again led by career education. now that company said it received a formal order of investigation from the securities and exchange commission. it dropped about 25% in today’s session after falling 16% on friday. now, on friday, what the stock was reacting to was an amendment filed to a previously filed lawsuit. that lawsuit alleges the company falsified student enrollment documents to inflate revenue and inflate student enrollment rates. because of this we saw career education fall once again in today’s session because of the probe. we also saw a lot of the other education stocks fall. apollo group, as well as the tracking stock for apollo university of phoenix online and they were lower in today’s session. back over to you.
>> the ability to manage fuel and other costs helped shares of fedex reach a record high today. the world’s largest overnight delivery service had its biggest profit growth in almost two years and it is likely to continue.
>> taking their forecast upward. fedex corporation’s fourth quarter profit rose 47% on the words of a.g. edwards, the company is on a tear. the international shipper predicts the growth in demand will continue. fedex is raising its forecast not only for the current quarter but for the full year. and this is the result of higher sales and shipments for its international air and ground business. now, the chairman frederick smith says the number of packages shipped from china climbed 50% in the fiscal year ending last month. fedex also continues to cut or manage expenses. two examples are its early retirement program and as lane mentioned success in passing some of the higher fuel costs onto customers. you’re looking at the numbers now, fourth quarter profit rose to $412 million or $1.36 a share. that compares with $280 million or 92 cents a share. revenue rose 21% in just over to just over $7 billion. this partially reflects the purchase of the kinko’s copy store chain. fedex bought kinko’s in february to better compete in the retail market with u.p.s. stores and its sales contributed to 7% of fedex’s total. looking at the share price fedex’s shares rose as much as 2.3% today. the stock has gained 29% in the past year and that beats the 16% gain in the s&p 500. shares of u.p.s. ended up .5% today. this as full-year chart. they are up roughly 16% in the past 12 months. executives say growth in asia and latin america is outpacing that of the u.s. for fedex and it is reflected in their business so far. fedex’s average daily shipments rose 12% in the past three months of its most expensive packages. the company is trying to expand its roots to china under a new agreement between the two countries. arthur hatfield says the long-term and near-term growth for the company is in the international business.
>> if luke at fedex’s penetration level i’ll call it in the u.s., the u.s. is a mature market . they basically can deliver express packages to any address in the u.s., and the u.s. is very adept at using express parcel services. other countries around the world, developing countries, less industrialized countries, don’t have the penetration level of express services we have in the u.s.
>> well, fedex dominates overnight shipping in china and plans to service 100 more cities. it also services 200 cities and, lane, establish a package sorting hub as part of the plan.
>> huge potential. thanks. up next, why turkey may become the best performing market in the world and how investors can buy into that country.
