每日市场点评 --- April 17, 2008
(2008-04-17 14:51:49)
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The market ended the day essentially flat, which was not bad at all given the big rally we saw yesterday. Even better, the market held up very well despite relatively bearish economic news and worse-than-expected earning results from Merrill and Pfizer. It shows that the recent rally may have legs.
Start with the weekly initial claims. The number for the week ending April 12th came at 372K, slightly below economists forecasted. The previous week’s number, however, was revised downwards by 12K. The continuing claims increased 26K to 2.984 million. Although the weekly claims are still below the psychological level of 400K, the odds are it will be breached sooner rather than later. In a separated report, the Leading Indicators advanced 0.1% in March, matching with expectation. The biggest disappointment came from the Philadelphia Fed Index. Economists expected a reading of -15.0 and it came at -24.9. The market had wished for a positive surprise given the benign reading in the NY Empire State Index on Tuesday but apparently that was just a wishful thinking.
Financials were one of the few sectors posting a gain for the day. Transportation and Technology were among the noticeable losers. The former was down mainly due to a disappointing earning report from Con-way, a trucking company while the latter was dropping in sympathy with the 6%+ drop in the Europe Tech Index, which was mainly due to a profit miss from Nokia. After the bell, Google’s earnings handily beat both top line and bottom line estimations and should give technology an early boost tomorrow, which happens to be the option expiry date. Treasuries continued to be sold off as investors reasoned the worst of the crisis was over. The CRB commodity index inched higher while the US dollar also gained some ground against the yen and the euro. So far during this busy earnings week, the market managed to hold up really well but it still has one last test to go through, which is earnings from the Citigroup that is scheduled to be released tomorrow morning.