Earnings Worries Continue To Drag On Stocks
Stocks shook off early losses on Thursday to trade mixed at midday. Earnings worries weighed on fiber optics stocks.
The ISDEX
June employment data will be released on Friday. Analysts expect a 275,000 gain in non-farm payrolls, a 4.1% unemployment rate, and a 0.4% increase in hourly wages. Yahoo
Earnings warnings from Visual Networks
On2.com
Mortgage.com
Wall Street reacted favorably to Interwave's
Profit-taking continued to hit Digital Island
Phone.com
MyPoints.com
Digex
DoubleClick
Bluefly
Some technical comments on the market: The indexes remain range-bound, with sharp moves up and down, but still no break of our trading ranges. This is indicative of a market lacking direction, but given how narrow the trading range has become, it's not likely to last much longer. The Nasdaq broke through recent support of 3832-3838 this morning but turned around at 3820. However, we may be forming a bear flag after the s fell 2 to 728, well off its low of 715. The Nasdaq rose 6 to 3869 after falling as low as 3820. The Dow fell 38 to 3445 and the S&P 500 slipped 1 point to 1445. Volume declined on the NYSE to 425 million shares, but rose on the Nasdaq to 660 million shares. Decliners led 13 to 12 on the Big Board and 20 to 14 on the Nasdaq.
will kick off earnings season July 11, and Ariba
will follow on July 12.
, Caprock Communications
and Orckit
weighed on Internet infrastructure stocks, and concern about IBM's
and Hewlett-Packard's
earnings weighed on the Dow. Visual Networks cratered 14 3/4 to 11 1/2 after announcing that earnings would be 1 cent per share, instead of the 6 cents analysts were expecting. Caprock fell 6 1/16 to 11 7/8 and Orckit fell 4 1/2 to 13 1/2. The warnings hit the leading Internet infrastructure stocks: Corning
fell 6 3/4 to 248 5/8, SDL
declined 1 13/16 to 273 1/2 after trading as low as 255, JDS Uniphase
dropped 6 1/4 to 112 3/4, below recent support, and Juniper Networks
fell 5 7/16 to 135 15/16.
soared 11 to 112 1/4 on positive comments from Paul LeCoque, president of LongView Capital Management. "One of my favorite positions in B2B is i2 Technologies," he told The Wall Street Transcript. "I look at i2 the way I look at a lot of my semiconductor, data storage, networking and fiber-optic companies. That is, no matter who wins in the B2B exchange and e-commerce marketplace, you're still going to need supply chain software, and i2 is the dominant provider of supply chain software."
gained 15/16 to 5 7/16 after preannouncing positive second quarter earnings.
gained 3/8 to 1 7/8 on news of an alliance with Wells Fargo.
announcement that it will buy Microcellular Systems. Interwave rose 2 to 14 5/8.
, off 4 1/8 to 44 1/4. The stock has now given back all its gains from rumors that the company is expected to announce major contract wins.
continued to struggle, losing 2 to 65 5/8 despite an SG Cowen Strong Buy rating and $100 price target.
added 1/4 to 16 5/16 on a Merrill Lynch Buy rating.
gained 2 1/16 to 71 1/2 after Goldman Sachs added the Web hosting firm to its Recommended List.
rose 2 15/16 to 40 7/16 on news that DoubleClick Japan will merge with NetGravity Asia Pacific on Monday.
added 3/8 to 2 5/8 on news that it received an additional $3 million from Soros Private Equity Partners, for a total of $9 million so far out of a $15 million commitment.