Hot Oil Burns Stocks in U.S.
Updated from 11:12 a.m. EDT
Stocks in the U.S. were slipping early Wednesday as traders digested mixed news on the corporate front and another new high for oil.
Following a mildly positive start, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
quickly turned negative and recently sank 66 points to 12,762. The
S&P 500
was down 2 points at 1411, and the
Nasdaq Composite
was off 5 points to 2487.
That came after the newly benchmarked July crude contract shot past $132 a barrel for the first time on word crude stockpiles declined 5.4 million barrels last week, according to the Energy Information Administration. Recently, futures were up $2.25 at $131.23.
Gold futures were tacking on $8.70 to $928.90 an once. The U.S. dollar had another weak day, losing 0.7% to the euro at $1.5772 and softening by 0.3% against the yen at 103.30.
On the corporate front, after the market's prior close, Dow component
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ) - Get Report
confirmed that fiscal second-quarter earnings
to $2.1 billion on rising revenue of $28.3 billion. The results were in line with what the computer maker announced last week, when the company simultaneously said it had
EDS
(EDS)
for $13.9 billion.
H-P shares were down 2.4%.
At the same time,
Time Warner
(TWX)
said it will
spin off
its
Time Warner Cable
(TWC)
business. Shares were adding 1.4% and 3.1%, respectively.
American Airlines parent
AMR Corp.
(AMR)
tumbled 16% after saying it will
reduce domestic flights and staff capacity
by 11% to 12% in the fourth quarter, citing agonizing fuel costs and a tough macro environment overall.
Soleil downgraded AMR and United operator
UAL Corp.
(UAL) - Get Report
to sell while cutting
Continental
(CAL) - Get Report
to hold from buy, and Lehman Brothers sliced its price targets on all three. UAL shares fell 13.2%, and Continental lost 9.6%.
Lehman Brothers eased its price targets on several other airline stocks, as well, including
U.S. Airways
(LCC)
,
Northwest
(NWA)
,
Jetblue
(JBLU) - Get Report
, and
Delta
(DAL) - Get Report
. Shares of the companies shed between 5.2% and 12.7%.
Back in earnings, TurboTax software maker
Intuit
(INTU) - Get Report
with adjusted earnings of $1.39 a share. Revenue jumped 15%, and the company issued in-line guidance for the current quarter. Shares tracked 4.7% higher.
Analog Devices
(ADI) - Get Report
, booked a climbing profit for last quarter and set out bullish guidance for the next, but the chipmaker's gross margin was also down slightly from the prior quarter. The stock gave up 3.6%.
Also, two days after
Staples
(SPLS)
launched a $4.3 billion (2.8 billion euros) hostile takeout bid for
Corporate Express
(CXP) - Get Report
, the latter agreed to buy France-based Lyreco for $2.71 billion (1.73 billion euros) in an attempt to fend off those efforts. Shares of Staples were down 2.3%.
As for economic data, this afternoon the
Federal Reserve
is scheduled to release minutes from its April 30 gathering, when the central bank cut the fed funds target rate by another quarter-point to 2% and implied that it may be finished with its months-long easing campaign.
Treasury prices were slipping. The 10-year note was off 13/32 in price to yield 3.83% and the 30-year bond lost 19/32 in price, yielding 4.57%.
The major overseas markets were mostly falling. In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 dropped 1.7% overnight, but the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong added 1.2%. Among European bourses, London's FTSE 100 was virtually flat at 6191, and Germany's Xetra Dax surrendered 1.2%. The Paris Cac moved down 0.5%.