The markets were hit with some post-Fed rate hike jitters. Despite
yesterday’s buy on the rumor, sell on the news trading activity, today’s
profit-taking hinged on the Fed’s aggressive remarks following its
committee meeting.
Investors are already starting to look ahead to next month’s FOMC meeting,
anticipating additional rate increases, and buckling down for an anemic
summer in the stock market.
After solid returns early in the week, the ISDEX gave back some gains,
falling 2.57% on the day. Rate sensitive bellwether stocks dragged the NYSE
into the red, shedding 164.83 to 10,769.74, while tech stocks joined the
sell-off sending the Nasdaq sliding 72.62 to 3,644.95.
Lycos investors just can’t seem to make up their
minds, rolling out of the wrong side of the bed with a heavy dose of
sellers-remorse this morning. Shares plunged 15-1/32 to 57-19/32, following
yesterday’s Terra Networks merger news out after
the bell. The stock-swap deal is worth roughly $12.5 billion for Lycos, and
investors would do well to be happy with it. It won’t get any better than
this.
Shares of Mountain View-based Veritas roared
7-5/16 to 111-5/16, after the software maker inked a deal to provide Big
Blue’s enterprise computing business with storage management software. The
agreement calls for IBM’s AIX server platform to
carry Veritas’ product for the next five years.
TheStreet.com stormed off the set of its weekly
Fox television news piece, tired of the TV show’s parent company News
Corp. treating the struggling financial news Web site
like yesterday’s flavor of the month. Shares of TheStreet.com curiously
added 7/8 to 7-15/16.
Red Hat eased 3/4 to 21-1/4, after announcing
plans to release its source code ahead of Intel’s Itanium processor debut. The Open source newcomer will help
developers port and optimize applications for IA-64 Linux.
The Fed rained on e-brokers’ parade, and discount giant Charles
Schwab led the way lower, down 1-15/16 to 43-3/4,
while Knight/Trimark tumbled 1-1/4 to 29-7/8.
TD Waterhouse eased 1/8 to 18-9/16, after reporting
better-than-expected losses after the bell yesterday.
