Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Morning Market Comment 1/24/07

It looks as if there may be some further tech leadership today. Nasdaq futures continue to show the strongest of the futures gains with a rise of a half percent.

Imagine that Yahoo! is going to be one of the leaders today. It's up about 5% after earnings last night. Google's up in sympathy by more than 1 percent. Even long, long time laggard Sun Microsystems (SUNW) is rising after posting its first profit in six quarters along with news KKR has invested $700 mln.

A quick round up of some other earnings...
Corning (GLW) posted Q4 earnings earnings 3c above estimates w/stronger than expected revenue. but sees Q1 at 24-27c vs consensus estimates of 27c,but stock still up 4%.
Hershey (HSY) missed at 67c, vs estimates of 71c.
Amerisource Bergen (ABC) beat with earnings of 65c vs ests of 56c.
Unisys (UIS) earnings at 6c, below 9c est.

AMD - down another 6% after posting the full set of numbers. Let's face it, AMD and Intel are engaged in a Monty Python like battle... where right now AMD is the knight and has lost a number of limbs, but is still saying to Intel... "C'mon coward, only a flesh wound... let's keep fighting.." AMD has no choice, it's the nature of the business, and perhaps the company's will reverse roles again. Intel is up 4-cents this morning.

54-cent breather for crude oil as the SPR news is assessed... complicated stuff that doesn't resolve issues with all the papers barrels and the March contract in the near term, but does seem to change market dynamics in a big way overall over time. Nat gas after a huge 2 day run down 1.2%. Gold also taking a breather in the $643 area this morning w/little upward dollar push from State of the Union. March Euro dollar FX holding at above $1.30.

But the message remains clear... a close above 1432 on the S&P is needed to show the bulls mean some real business, or a break below the 20 day moving average on the S&P to show some bearish seriousness... otherwise it remains a game of 1970's Atari pong. Yahoo! and SUNW as the tech leaders don't give me the greatest of confidence, but let's see what they can do. Deals can also spur bullish feelings and this Dominion package that Goldman and Morgan are putting together can also work to get some speculative juices flowing in the market. more later.

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