Early Rally Fades
An early rally on good earnings news from Nokia and Ciena faded by the end of the day on Thursday, as technology and Internet stocks finished lower. But Nasdaq futures rose 1% after the bell on earnings news from Oracle and Adobe that wasn't as bad as feared.
The ISDEX http://www.wsrn.com/apps/ISDEX/
The Producer Price Index and Michigan Consumer Sentiment will be reported tomorrow morning.
Oracle
During the day, Ciena
Yahoo
Akamai
Siebel Systems
Network Appliance
Some technical comments on the market: Note: We are now including charts in the technical market commentary. If you can't get the charts via the e-mail newsletter version, try this link: http://www.afterhourstrading.com/column.html
The Nasdaq did the opposite today of what it did yesterday: closing lower than its open (2023.79) after gapping up, creating an ugly black candlestick. Not a good sign. All is not lost, however, as long as the index can preserve its recent rally attempt by staying above 1922 or so. There is a gap at 1924-1930 that has so far provided support. The Nasdaq continues to form a bullish falling wedge (first chart), with the lower line touching on the December and January closing lows; that lower line is declining at 5 points or so a day, so we'll place it at 1902 for tomorrow. The next strong support on the index after that is about 1850-1870. To the upside, the Nasdaq needs to fill a down gap at 2042-2053, and must get back above 2070, the redrawn 1990 logarithmic trendline. After that, the upper boundary of that falling wedge is around 2100, and next resistance after that is 2252. The index is trapped in a range here, between 1900 and 2100. The Nasdaq 100 is also forming a bullish forming wedge (second chart), but could also be forming a nasty bear flag (third chart), with about 300 points of potential downside. The Nasdaq 100 broke that pattern to the downside today, so we absolutely want those lower falling wedge boundaries to hold (at 1902 on the Nasdaq for tomorrow). Given that the last decline on the Nasdaq indexes might have been an exhaustion move, that bear flag might not work out. We hope. On the plus side, the Nasdaq created a positive divergence the last two days: for the first time, the S&P 500 set lower lows, but the Nasdaq did not. At 26 times earnings, the 10 largest Nasdaq stocks are beginning to look attractive (albeit with falling earnings) compared to the price-to-earnings ratios of 20 sported by the Dow and S&P.
fell 5 to 224, and the Nasdaq lost 31 to 1940. The S&P 500 rose 6 to 1173, and the Dow added 57 to 10,031. Volume declined to 1.23 billion shares on the NYSE, and 1.95 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led 16 to 14 on the NYSE, but decliners led 19 to 17 on the Nasdaq. For earnings reports, visit our earnings calendar at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/internet.xpl and reported earnings at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/ireported.xpl. For after hours quotes and news, visit our after hours trading site at http://www.afterhourstrading.com.
traded unchanged at 14 5/8 after matching lowered estimates of 10 cents a share and predicting flat growth next quarter. However, i2
fell after hours after Oracle's application software sales came in lower than expected. Adobe
also traded higher after hours after beating estimates but guided future estimates lower. Compaq
also issued an earnings warning after the bell, and was unchanged on the news.
rose 1 1/2 to 54 7/8 after reaffirming its bullish earnings outlook. Juniper
slipped 1 1/4 to 56, Cisco
rose 1/4 to 20 1/2, and JDS Uniphase
declined 3/8 to 24 3/16. Corning
lost .08 to 23.90 despite a deal with China Netcom. Nokia
surged 3.15 to 24.95 after the company lowered revenue estimates but said it would meet bottom line estimates.
lost 5/16 to 15 after comments by Disney
chief Michael Eisner that Disney is not interested in buying Yahoo, the latest big media company to say that.
fell 1 7/8 despite a new COO from Lucent
and a deal with Broadwing
.
, off 2 3/16 to 26 9/16, continued to fall on earnings worries. Check Point
fell 5 to 63 3/4.
fell 2 1/4 to 19 after JP Morgan lowered estimates on both NTAP and EMC
, which slipped .15 to 35.15. SanDisk
, off 1 to 19 7/8, warned.