CALDEIRÃO DE BOLSA

It's different this time!

The Nasdaq is up some 30 percent since its October low. Is this rally really for real?
November 22, 2002: 4:48 PM EST
By Bethany McLean, FORTUNE

Sign up for the Street Life e-mail newsletter


NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Did you know that the Nasdaq is up some 30 percent since its October low? And the S&P and the Dow are both up around 20 percent? So is this rally really for real? (Say that fast.)

Some pros say that it IS different this time: The bond market is quaking, oil prices are falling, and volume has picked up. And we've had seven straight weeks of higher closes for the Dow. (Today, the Dow slipped a small 40.31 to 8,804.84 while the Nasdaq eked out a tiny gain of 1.19 to 1,468.74) I'm a believer! (OK, I'm trying.) Let's hope that disappointment doesn't haunt our dreams. Thanks to Neil Diamond.

STOCK STUFF What a week for Hewlett-Packard. And IBM, and JP Morgan, and Citibank, and so many others. Is it the death of skepticism? Or were we just so skeptical that almost anything had to be good news? GE, which yesterday announced it would miss earnings for the first time in forever, shed 49 cents to $26.36.

Krispy Kreme jumped $2.06 to $39.01 after posting a 55 percent increase in earnings -- looks like the coffee goes well with the doughnuts. And really, what's better than caffeine and sugar?

But all was not completely sunshiny. Brocade fell $2 to $5.28 (27 percent!) after announcing a triple whammy: The company said it will miss earnings, cut 12 percent of its workforce, and ax its chief operating officer. Whew.

And SSB downgraded both Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft to "underperforms" -- aren't we tough? -- because Solly thinks that software profits are likely to disappoint. While PeopleSoft fell $1.04 to $19.99, Siebel recovered from an early slide to close up 8 cents at $8.75.

SANCTIMONY OR SAFETY FROM LAWSUITS? Did Prudential expect the uproar that its decision to prohibit its analysts from speaking to the media has generated? Prudential's ostensible reason is to "send a strong message to the market that Prudential considers its unbiased research to be valuable advice which should be made available to those who pay for it, namely our institutional and retail clients..."

Pru will still allow the media access to its published reports. Here's one reason (there are many) why this is ridiculous. How many retail clients do you know who get more information about a stock than what's in the published report? How many retail clients get to call up an analyst, say Mike Mayo, and ask, "Hey, Mike, about that Citibank call...."

If this helps anyone, it helps institutional investors. (Although analysts usually tell them different things than they tell the media, anyway.) But it sure doesn't help retail clients. Seems to me that Pru wants the free marketing that the media offers its analysts, but they also want to claim that they're better than everyone else. And the person who -- once again -- gets the short end of the stick is the individual investor.

Of course, everyone thinks that Pru's real motive is to lessen the threat of lawsuits stemming from loose-lipped analysts chattering on CNBC and in places like Fortune.

Loose change
You all know I love statistics -- stats make me feel like the world is an orderly, logical place. (Forget about the fact that they're usually flawed.) From a new report by RJ Rudden: Since the collapse of Enron, the credit rating downgrade to upgrade ratio for energy companies is 13:1 versus 3:1 for the three years prior.

"We think the failure of the asset sale strategy will force a major restructuring for company balance sheets with the burden falling on lenders," says RJ Rudden. (Hint: The report is entitled "Financial Distress in the Electric Power Markets -- It's About to get Worse".)...

So it looks like dividends are the new black. Sallie Mae, GE, and Home Depot have all announced dividend increases recently. It's all in the name of stock price salvation....

It lives! (I mean the IPO market.) Sandwich restaurant chain Cosi sold stock at $7 and closed at $7.60. And the company managed to sell stock even though it has never produced a penny in profit! Shades of the 1990s....

Looks like Wall Street firms are going to have to pay some $1 billion in fines to make amends for their overly bullish research. While Wall Street has sinned plenty, don't expect this to fix the problem.

Investment bankers are just one source of pressure for poor besieged research analysts. They also have to contend with company management and with institutional investors -- who are more than happy to see an analyst make an honest call as long as they don't own the stock. And then, there's human nature. Most of us like to be liked, which usually means saying nice things.

Fattened bulls

After seven weeks of gains, investors believe the markets offer firm ground. Can we make it eight?
November 22, 2002: 5:52 PM EST
By Justin Lahart, CNN/Money Staff Writer



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - As with all Americans, Wall Streeters will spend the first half of the week ahead with half an eye on the clock, counting down the minutes to Thanksgiving. But before they sit before that groaning table and set about getting as tryptophan-addled as possible, there will be work to do.

Stocks have come a long way since those fear-filled days of early October. The Dow Jones industrial average have made it to higher ground for seven weeks in a row -- its longest winning streak since early 1998 -- and traders are wondering if it can make it eight.

Tracking the market

Markets: 7 weeks of gains

Stocks: Winners and losers

Economics: Bond market rocking

Pro Picks: Eli Lilly and Pfizer

Tech: Finding a cheap net stock



Don't count it out. For one thing, Thanksgiving is traditionally good for the market: Together the Wednesday session before the holiday, and the shortened Friday session after it, have been positive for 41 of the past 50 years. And beyond the week's typical well-fed cheer, a raft of economic reports could give further succor to bulls. (Click here for a line-up of key events in the coming week.)

Pilgrim's progress
No, it's not as if the economy is off its sickbed just yet, but it does seem to be back to eating solid foods again. Weekly jobless numbers indicate stabilization in the job market. The weekly ABC News/Money Magazine consumer confidence poll has shown steady improvement from eight-year lows hit in October.

Retail sales, though not spectacular, aren't pointing to the sort of unmitigated shopping-season disaster that people were worrying about just a month back. And then there's the magic of stocks' big rally, which has probably got company managements thinking a little less dourly.

That creeping improvement should show up in some of the big economic reports coming up in the week ahead. The consumer confidence index for November, due out Tuesday, probably moved higher off of October's low levels. Wednesday's durable goods and Chicago-area purchasing managers' reports also look like they should improve.

"Things are going to look a little better," said Bill Dudley, head of U.S. economic research at Goldman Sachs. "Your going to see an economy that's soft, but not collapsing."

Still, Dudley cautions not to get too carried away by the improvement in the numbers. Many of the excesses of the bubble era still need working off, and it may not be until the second half of next year that the economy will be ready to walk out of the infirmary. Until then it will continue to give investors the occasional scare.

Through the woods?
Wall Street's optimists don't seem too worried about the economy just now, of course. The Dow Jones industrial average has tacked on 21 percent since hitting its nadir early in October, the S&P 500 has risen 20 percent, and the tech-stuffed Nasdaq is 31 percent higher.

The biggest gains have been in stocks that nobody would touch just a couple of months ago, like Corning, Network Appliance and Sprint PCS. Investors are betting, apparently, that survival won't be as much of a problem as they once thought.

"People think the worst is over in a lot of these things," said Jim Volk, director of institutional trading at D.A. Davidson. "It's given them courage to come back in."

The problem? Exactly the same thing happened in the fourth quarter last year, when investors ploughed money into stocks in the mistaken belief that the economy was on the road to health. Then, as now, it was the stocks of companies whose performance is most dependent on the economy, and whose outlooks were dodgiest, that saw the biggest gains.

"It's just one more wave of wild speculation that's going to end the same way the others have," said Bill Fleckenstein, a short seller who heads up the hedge fund Fleckenstein Capital. "To try to conclude that the bear market is over is the height of lunacy."

Fleckenstein thinks that more than anything, the rally is about fund managers playing a game of catch-up before the year ends. Because they are not judged on absolute terms, but how they have done relative to some benchmark, like the S&P 500, they are taking out excessive risk in hopes of coming out ahead.

"Everybody believes it's OK to lose money, but they can't let the market go up faster than their portfolio," he said. "They buy the most aggressive names they can and they don't care. It's just devolved into a game of three-card monte."

But if Fleckenstein is right, we could see funds continuing to throw money at the market right up until the end of the year.

Key events in the week ahead
It looks like housing activity held firm in October: Economists polled by Briefing.com expect existing home sales, due out Monday, came in at 5.35 million versus the previous month's 5.4 million. New home sales, due out Tuesday, are expected to come in at 980,000 versus September's 1.02 million.

The Commerce Department puts out its second look at third-quarter gross domestic product Tuesday. Recently released inventory data suggest it will be better than 3.5 percent growth clocked in the first reading.

The Consumer Confidence Index looks like it gained back some ground this month, with economists expecting a jump 83 from 79.4.

October personal income and spending could be the one challenging economic report in the coming week. Expectations are that income came in flat while spending grew by just 0.2 percent.

The University of Michigan's final look at consumer sentiment comes out Wednesday. Economists forecast that the sentiment index stood at 85.

Thanks to a rebound in transportation orders, durable goods orders for October, due out Wednesday, probably showed a pop. Economists expect a gain of 3 percent, reversing much of September's decline.

The most closely watched economic release of the week will likely the November Chicago Purchasing Managers' report, due out Wednesday. Expectations are that it improved slightly, rising to 47.5 from last month's 45.9.

Markets are closed Thursday for Thanksgiving. Pass the turducken.

Friday, when the market closes early, is typically the lowest-volume day of the year. Hard-nosed investors will be less interested in what's happening on the floor of the Exchange than in how fast people are forking over their cash at the malls

Índices americanos fecham pouco alterados; Dow sobe pela sétima semana

Os índices norte-americanos fecharam hoje mistos e pouco alterados, com o Dow Jones a descer 0,46% e o Nasdaq a ganhar 0,08%. Na semana os índices nos Estados Unidos conseguiram um saldo positivo, o que acontece pela sétima vez no Dow Jones.
O Dow Jones terminou a valer 8.804,84 pontos e o Nasdaq desceu fechou nos 1.468,74.

O Dow Jones conseguiu registar a sétima semana consecutiva de ganhos, tendo nas últimas cinco sessões valorizado 2,6%.

O Nasdaq registou a sexta semana de ganhos nas últimas sete, conseguindo nas últimas cinco sessões subir 4,1%.

Resultados positivos apresentados por algumas empresas, como a Hewlett Packard, e dados económicos favoráveis, explicam a nova semana positiva em Wall Street.

A sessão de hoje foi marcada pela fraca volatilidade, com os índices a oscilarem entre os ganhos e as perdas ao longo da sessão.

A Cisco Systems desceu 2,3%, a Intel caiu 0,89% e a General Motors desvalorizou 2,39%, enquanto a subir estiveram a Microsoft, a Boeing e a Oracle.


Fonte: Canal de Negócios 2002/11/22 21:56:05h

Bom dia a todos!