CALDEIRÃO DE BOLSA

News flash

The stock market can still go down. Wow, what a shock.
September 5, 2003: 4:57 PM EDT
By Bethany McLean, FORTUNE

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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The Dow dribbled downwards due to a nasty jobs report. During August, employers cut jobs at the fastest rate since March. But then someone -- a big someone -- reportedly made a switch from stocks to bonds. And, well, it's still sort of a summer Friday.

The Dow finished the day down 84.56 at 9,503.34. The Nasdaq fared better, falling just 10.73 to 1,858.24, thanks largely to Intel. (See below.)

STOCK STUFF Lots of angst, little end results. That was the story of the day. Intel said that its revenues this quarter will be at the high end of expectations, and the chips celebrated. Intel finished up 6 cents at $28.66.

PeopleSoft gained after announcing that its acquisition of JD Edwards will produce more cost savings than originally expected -- that is, if Oracle doesn't screw everything up -- but finished the day down 4 cents at $19.31.

Eli Lilly says that its 2003 profits should also come in at the top of the range, but also announced that it was halting a trial of a new anti-anxiety medication. After an up morning, the stock slid to close down 3 cents at $61.01.

Wal-Mart lost $1.17 to $58.91 after Bank of America downgraded the stock due to its high valuation. Circuit City added 27 cents to $10.50 on news that its business shrank less than expected. And last but definitely not least, troubled Metris shot up 61 cents to $4.30 on word that it might be close to getting much-needed new financing.

SOME SEERS SPEAK UBS Warburg quantitative research chief Joseph Mezrich writes that "no, this is not a replay of the tech bubble." Instead, he says, the closest precedent is the rally that began after the summer of 1982, where from August 12 through June 22, 1983 the S&P rose 69.9 percent. Not a bad precedent, hmmm?

And Mezrich has a number of arguments for why we may not even have to suffer through the pullback that followed those stellar gains of twenty years ago, including positive signs in capex and earnings growth. Lest this make us too complacent, Merrill's Steve Milunovich points out that tech sells at twice the level of the market based on price to earnings and price to sales ratios. And analysts are upgrading, which he says is usually a contrary indicator. Oh, what to believe?

Loose Change
He's NOT mincing words. "I must say that the developments in the US, where may I say that all sense of fiscal discipline seems to have disappeared, and the developments in particular in major European countries are of course of grave concern to the monetary authorities." So says European Central Bank president Wim Duisenberg, reports Reuters...

US taxable fixed income funds rose 0.45 percent last month after falling 2.51 percent in July, the steepest fall since April 1987, says Lipper. Most of the gains occurred on one day -- August 28 -- when there was yet another dismal jobs report....

Is this get out of jail free time? So lots of stocks that blew up before or during second quarter earnings announcements are now higher than they were before the bad news. The thinking is that now that all the bad news is out, there's only good news to come. Whatever happened to the cockroach theory?

Then, there's Spitzer's latest salvo. Even the news that mutual funds may have been robbing their investors didn't dent the market. "We're moving beyond that -- the market's almost immune to the scandals now," First Albany's Hugh Johnson told Reuters...

Speaking of "get out of jail free," there are rumors that the music industry is going to offer amnesty to those downloaders/freeloaders who promise to change their ways. Not totally alienating your customers seems like a good idea...

Did you know that the two fastest growing areas on eBay are clothing and home goods? I'm a contributor!

Techs talk a good game

Tech execs seem confident that business is improving, but very few insiders are buying.
September 5, 2003: 5:45 PM EDT
By Paul R. La Monica, CNN/Money Senior Writer



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - What's up with all these shiny, happy tech companies lately?

Cisco CEO John Chambers and EMC CEO Joseph Tucci both told audiences at an SG Cowen conference in Boston this week that they were seeing gradual signs of a corporate tech spending pickup. Also at that conference, Hewlett-Packard CFO Bob Wayman reaffirmed the company's fiscal fourth-quarter outlook.

In addition, there was a tech trifecta of good earnings news Thursday: Intel tightened its sales guidance, National Semiconductor said sales for its fiscal second quarter should be higher than expected, and PeopleSoft raised its earnings and revenue targets for 2004.

Not a bad week.

Good week for tech

Intel tightens guidance

HP reaffirms fiscal 4Q outlook

EMC sees broad tech improvement

Chambers: Cisco had strong August



And in what might be the most encouraging sign, tech stocks have continued to rally despite some negative news for the overall market, such as the announcement of a probe of the mutual fund industry by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Not even Friday's disappointing jobs report was able to push the sector back. The Amex Technology Index was up about 0.5 percent Friday afternoon while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained more than 2 percent.

"There's a saying that a market that doesn't go down on bad news is destined to go up," said Carl Marker, manager of the IMS Capital Value fund, which owns shares of tech companies EMC, Symantec, Unisys, LSI Logic and Sungard Data Systems.

So does tech rally still have a ways to go? That might be a stretch. But at the very least, it seems to be getting less and less likely that tech stocks will experience a major pullback in the near term.

Wendell Perkins, manager of the JohnsonFamily Large Cap Value and JohnsonFamily Small Cap Value fund said that tech stocks might trade sideways for a while as investors digest this year's massive run. But he is not worried about fundamentals taking a turn for the worse.

"We are seeing a real recovery in tech revenue and earnings, and we look at 2004 being a reasonably good year for the economy. The question is: Does the outlook really support the market run and the valuations we put on those companies?" Perkins said.

Not so confident?
Tech insider selling has escalated recently while buying remains anemic.

Insider Selling (mill) Insider Buying (mill)
June $427.0 $2.8
July $515.9 $3.6
August $909.1 $5.9



Source: Thomson Financial

One other factor that could limit upside in the short run is the fact that tech insiders don't appear to be showing much faith in the rally, despite all the good news on the earnings front lately.

The level of insider selling in the tech sector hit $901 million in August, the highest level since November 2001 according to Thomson Financial. The value of tech insider buying totaled only $5.9 million in August, which means that for every $1 in insider purchases, there was nearly $154 in insider sales.

Lon Gerber, director of insider research for Thomson Financial, said this is the most bearish indication of insider sentiment in tech since Thomson started tracking insider transactions by sector in 1997.

What's more, August marked the third consecutive month of less than $10 million in insider purchases in the tech sector. So even though tech execs are talking a good game about an improving environment, their actions aren't backing that up just yet.

The Fed's jobs dilemma

Weak labor market could bring Bernanke's threatened rate cut -- but what good would it do?
September 5, 2003: 12:26 PM EDT
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The Federal Reserve, which has promised to keep short-term interest rates low for a long time, might even have found incentive in Friday's dismal jobs report to cut rates again. But would a cut do any good?


"It's not in my forecast, but it's probable, a quarter from now, if we're sitting in the same place we have been, with some uneven signs of recovery, but no real improvement in payrolls and inflation edging lower -- those are the conditions under which the Fed has cut recently," said former Fed economist Lara Rhame, now a currency analyst with Brown Brothers Harriman.

Fed officials launched a full-court press Thursday to convince the bond market they had no intention of hiking the central bank's target for the fed funds rate -- an overnight lending rate that affects other borrowing rates in the economy -- any time soon.

Bond prices have plunged since mid-June, pushing interest rates to their highest level in more than a year, in part due to fears that the Fed will soon raise short-term rates in the face of a third-quarter surge in economic growth. Bond prices and yields move in the opposite direction.

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Fed governor Ben Bernanke and San Francisco Fed President Robert Parry, both voting members of the Fed's rate-setting committee, said the Fed saw few signs that inflation -- a usual hallmark of a strong economy -- or jobs growth were set to skyrocket, allowing the Fed to keep rates lower longer.

And Friday's report from the Labor Department that employers slashed 93,000 jobs from non-farm payrolls in August -- the middle of a quarter in which some economists believe gross domestic product (GDP) is growing at a rollicking 5 percent annual rate -- only helped make their case.

Bernanke, in fact, had warned the Fed could cut again. Too many more weak payrolls numbers could encourage the Fed to do just that.

Rate cutting since 2001
The central bank reduces rates to stimulate the economy by keeping borrowing costs low and raises them to fight inflation.



Labor Secretary Elaine Chao talks to CNNfn's Rhonda Schaffler about the latest unemployment numbers.


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The Fed has cut rates 13 times since early January 2001 to cope with the effects of a recession that lasted for much of 2001, the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a long bear market in stocks and other woes.

During the course of the long recession/recovery period, inflation has stayed mild while the labor market has remained weak, mired in its longest slump since World War II.

After fighting inflation for decades, the Fed has lately said it was worried that inflation was too low, hurting corporate pricing power and profits, and threatening eventual deflation, a potentially more damaging condition of falling prices.

Bernanke and other economists say the economy still has too much "slack" -- unemployed workers and unused production capacity. But businesses might be slow to use up that slack, thanks in part to robust productivity gains that have helped them milk more production out of fewer workers, without making expensive upgrades to facilities.


But such a view raises the question of just how effective another rate cut would be in creating jobs. After all, the Fed has slashed the fed funds rate from 6.5 percent to 1 percent, the lowest level in more than 40 years, and payrolls are still 2.8 million jobs lower than they were in March 2001.

"It's unclear what lower rates would do," said former Fed economist Wayne Ayers, now chief economist at Fleet Boston Financial. "If it's really true that productivity and structural changes are causing labor market weakness, it's not clear that another cut in rates would be helpful to the labor market."


--*Disclaimer

TMT: Cofina espera definir entrada na Cabovisão em breve
2003-09-06 12:25:53

O grupo Cofina, tido como firme interessada na aquisição da Cabovisão, espera que até Outubro a situação financeira da CSII, accionista único da operadora, fique clarificada para então avançar para uma operação que lhe dê o controlo do capital da Cabovisão, avança o Expresso na edição deste sábado.

A expectativa do grupo liderado por Paulo Fernandes é de que o processo de negociações envolvendo a canadiana Cable Satisfaction International Inc. (CSII), bancos credores, obrigacionistas e fornecedores, esteja concluído em Outubro, sendo que a estratégia da Cofina poderá passar pela conversão de créditos em capital, acrescida de entrada de dinheiro fresco no capital da sociedade.

A CSSI, que encontra-se em situação financeira difícil, renegociou recentemente financiamentos com instituições bancárias credoras e colocou-se sob protecção de judicial de falência num tribunal do Quebec.

A Cabovisão é a única operadora de cabo alternativa à TV Cabo em Portugal, e opera em três segmentos: televisão por cabo, serviço fixo de telefone e internet, detendo uma quota de cerca de 18% na televisão por cabo em Portugal, segundo números da própria empresa.

Fonte: Diário Digital

Negócios: Empresas com «mau comportamento devem ser expulsas», defende presidente da Bolsa
2003-09-06 11:37:04

As empresas que têm um mau comportamento devem ser expulsas do mercado, defende o presidente da Euronext Lisboa (empresa gestora da Bolsa). «De há muito tempo para cá defendo que quem não se porta bem no mercado deve ser expulso», afirma João Freixa numa entrevista publicada no Expresso deste sábado.

Se a erradicação não for conseguida através do desinteresse dos investidores aos emitentes, então deverá ser o próprio regulador [Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliáriosem conjunto com a Associação de Bancos Portugueses (ABP), o responsável da Euronext Lisboa, defende que sejam introduzidas medidas de alteração já no Orçamento de Estado de 2004.

O responsável da Euronext Lisboa considera o quadro actual «absolutamente catastrófico para os particulares por causa do custo administrativo, afastando-os da Bolsa, porque têm de preencher declarações complexíssimas (...).

Fonte: Diário Digital

Conjuntura: Zona Euro: Duisenberg reitera retoma gradual da economia em 2003
2003-09-06 10:29:13

A actividade económica na zona vai registar uma retoma gradual ao longo do segundo semestre de 2003, com um aumento no ritmo de crescimento em 2004, afirmou sexta-feira Wim Duisenberg, presidente do Banco Central Europeu (BCE) em Calgary, no Canadá.

Em comunicação proferida numa conferência sobre financiamento do crescimento global Duisenberg assinalou, no entanto, que «apesar das perspectivas favoráveis da evolução da inflação terem permitido reduzir as taxas de juro para níveis historicamente baixos, a política monetária, por si só, não pode garantir níveis de crescimento sustentável e emprego duradouros na zona euro».

Parte da dificuldade em aproximar o ritmo de crescimento da economia dos Doze do seu potencial relaciona-se com a «falta de ambição política», nos anos mais recentes, em particular na «promoção de políticas fiscais e reformas estruturais que melhorem o clima de investimento e o enquadramento laboral» da zona euro, afirmou.

Fonte: Diário Digital