Preopen Trading: Post-Halloween Blues Flatten Prospects for Open

Futures can't sustain yesterday's sugar high with WorldCom's tracking stock news.

Author:: Betsy Riley
Publish date:: Nov 1, 2000 8:21 AM EST

Futures can't sustain yesterday's sugar high with WorldCom's tracking stock news.

One week after

AT&T

(T) - Get Report

said it is splitting itself into

four separate businesses,

WorldCom

(WCOM)

this morning said it is

creating a tracking stock for its consumer business. The consumer business will bring back the name used by the consumer group before it merged with WorldCom,

MCI

(MCI) - Get Report

, and will include consumer long-distance service. The company will distribute 100% of this MCI stake to shareholders.

Shareholders of WorldCom will get 1 share of MCI stock for every 25 shares of WorldCom. The stock recently was the most actively traded stock on electronic trading brokerage

Instinet

and lately dropped $2.75, or 11.6%, to $21.

Rambus

(RMBS) - Get Report

was bouncing up $2.56 to $47.50, after sliding 15.9% in yesterday's action after online trade magazine

Electronic Buyers' News

reported that

Intel

(INTC) - Get Report

would phase out its use of Rambus technology.

After yesterday's triple-digit gains in the

Dow and

Nasdaq, some of that optimism seemed to have scattered and futures were indicating a flat to negative opening. The

S&P 500 futures on

Globex

lately were down 6.50 to 1433.7, or about 5.5 points below fair value as calculated by

Prudential Securities

Nasdaq 100

futures were 22 lower to 3278, or about 31 points below fair value as calculated by

TheStreet.com

Europe's major indices were mixed at midsession, with France's

CAC-40

off 0.1%, Germany's

Xetra Dax

down 0.2% and the U.K.'s

FTSE 100

up 0.4%. Asian markets rallied. Japan's

Nikkei 225

jumped 2.3% overnight, while Hong Kong's

Hang Seng

rose 3.1% (see today's

Asian Markets Update for more).

Elsewhere in preopen trading, on

Island

Xilinx

(XLNX) - Get Report

was up down $4 to $68.44.

For Tuesday's postclose trading, see The Night Watch.

Senior editor Ellen Braitman chats with Christopher Edmonds, columnist for RealMoney.com, exclusively on TheStreet.com at 3 p.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 1. Join them with your market and investment questions by logging on the home page.