Overnight Markets: Wall Street ends flat amid low volumes

Investors await key companies’ results later this week as gains in telecommunications companies were offset by industrial and financial groups.

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by Himanshu Singh on Oct 12, 2010 at 04:35

Overnight Markets: Wall Street ends flat amid low volumes

Wall Street closed little changed on Monday ahead of key companies’ results later this week and as gains in telecommunications companies were offset by industrial and financial groups.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained four points, or 0.04%, to end at 11,010. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index and Nasdaq closed flat at 1,165 and 2,402 respectively. Trading volumes were less as many trading floors were closed for the Columbus day holiday.

Telecoms groups continued to see gains with Verizon adding 0.6%, AT&T gaining 0.3% and Frontier Communications adding 2.5%.

In other corporate news, natural gas group Chesapeake rose 1.1% after Cnooc, the Chinese energy producer, agreed to buy a one-third stake in Chesapeake’s Eagle Ford gas shale for $1.1bn. Specialty children's apparel company Gymboree Corp surged 22.4% after it agreed to sell itself to Bain Capital for $1.8 billion.

The New York Times Company climbed 7.1% amid expectation of rebounding advertising sales in its third quarter earnings.

Intel, scheduled to report earnings on Tuesday, added 0.2%, as analysts expect it to top its previous quarter’s revenues. Google, reporting on Thursday, gained 0.5% as the company is expected to top second quarter earnings. JPMorgan Chase added 1.1% ahead of its earnings announcement on Wednesday.

In current trading, Asian stocks declined on Tuesday as commodity companies fell on lower oil and metal prices and Japanese automakers fell amid concern the strong yen will hurt earnings.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.7% to 129.47 as of 10:22 a.m. in Tokyo. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average shed 0.5% after markets were shut for a public holiday yesterday. South Korea’s Kospi index lost 0.7%. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 1.2% as mining companies declined. Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.12% at 2,810.

In company news, BHP Billiton fell 1.4% in Sydney after crude and metal prices declined. Toyota Motor lost 0.5% in Tokyo after the yen strengthened to a 15-year high against the dollar. Honda Motor shed 0.8%.

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Chris B (Slough UK)

Oct 12, 2010 at 10:23

The calm before the storm? 11000 on the DOW would seem like an ideal reversal point after all. When you figure at the top of the 'boom' the DOW made it up to about 14000. We are not so far from that now, but the economic back-drop is as we all know very different from what it was. QE2 in the states may bouy stocks for a while further trashing the Dollar and leaving people searching for 'safe' places to park their loot. In the end though stocks will also disappoint. Gold may fall back as has been predicted, but it will undoubtedly rise like a phoenix from the ashes and not falling down with the markets, but disconnecting as people really do, do a flight to safety. There is no escaping the deleveraging of debt and the longer it is put off, the bigger the crash will ultimately be. This of course could me tomorrow or anytime down the line, but it will happen. Meanwhile, the race to the currency bottom continues. Anybody who believes that trashing their countries currency is a good thing is sadly deluded. The misguided belief that it helps exports is simpy a convenient argument, to justify the actions of debasing the currency. Because conversely it makes imports more expensive. Who wants to live in a world where their money and income is half what is was a few years back? Then half again! Race to the bottom is what it is and you know what you find at the bottom, a pile of ****.

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