Stocks keep rising in a traditionally weak month. Tech and financial upgrades lead the buyers.
September 8, 2003: 10:21 AM EDT
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. stock markets rose Monday morning, following several upgrades of key technology and financial issues.
Starting off the second week of what is traditionally one of Wall Street's weakest months with continued buying, investors focused on technology and financial stocks after several analyst upgrades in both sectors.
About half an hour into the trading session, the Dow Jones industrial average (up 82.25 to 9585.59, Charts), the Standard & Poor's 500 (up 9.47 to 1030.86, Charts) index and the Nasdaq composite (up 25.94 to 1884.18, Charts) all showed relatively strong advances, with the Nasdaq up more than 1 percent.
Stocks fell Friday as worries about the prolonged weakness in the labor market undermined investor confidence, leading to profit taking. However, gains earlier in the week were enough to push stocks higher for the full-week tally.
After several weeks of rallies, analysts say the markets could be vulnerable to more profit taking Monday or during the week. But there was no sign of the sellers yet.
Credit Suisse First Boston upgraded IBM (IBM: up $2.31 to $89.26, Research, Estimates) to "outperform" from "neutral," pointing to the Dow stock as an ideal tech-spending recovery play. IBM climbed 2.3 percent. Additionally, chipmaker R.F. Micro Devices (RFMD: up $0.97 to $9.98, Research, Estimates) said earnings in its current quarter will be better than expected and its stock surged more than 11 percent.
Merrill Lynch raised its third-quarter earnings per share forecast on Goldman Sachs (GS: up $0.51 to $91.47, Research, Estimates) and Lehman Brothers (LEH: up $0.64 to $68.10, Research, Estimates), leading to gains in both stocks.
In its weekly update, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT: down $0.75 to $58.14, Research, Estimates) said it's on track to meet forecasts for September but that the results probably won't be as strong as in August. But the stock's recent solid run, as well as that of rival Target (TGT: down $1.11 to $38.90, Research, Estimates) led Sanford Bernstein to downgrade both to "market perform" from "outperform." Wal-Mart's stock fell more than 1 percent and Target was down 2.25 percent.
Market breadth was decisively positive and trading volume was robust. Seven stocks rose for every three that fell on the New York Stock Exchange, where 216 million shares traded, and on the Nasdaq, where 390 million shares changed hands.
Looming in the background were comments by President Bush over the weekend, in which he stressed that the fight in Iraq was far from over and asked for another $87 billion to fund continuing operations.
Treasury prices recovered after an early slump, sending the 10-year note yield up to 4.33 percent from 4.35 percent late Friday. The dollar was little changed against the euro and sank versus the yen.
NYMEX light sweet crude oil futures rose 34 cents to $29.22 a barrel. COMEX gold fell $2.90 to $375.80 an ounce.
European markets edged higher at midday. Asian stocks ended mixed Monday
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