
Weekend Report: Nikkei Jumps at Open on Bank-Reform Hope
After last week's gyrations in the stock market, it seems this weekend slipped by a little more quickly than most.
Monday is almost here, and the coming week will provide plenty of news for investors to digest as third-quarter earnings season kicks into gear and a host of first-tier economic indicators get released.
For some this is a long weekend. Tomorrow, the bond market is closed for the
Columbus Day
holiday, though the stock market is open for business.
Over the weekend, congressional
GOP
members and the
White House
neared a deal that would give $18 billion to the
International Monetary Fund
.
Over in Japan, the head of the
Economic Planning Agency
, Taichi Sakaiya, warned in a TV interview that Japan may sink further into recession in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2000. But reports that Japan may be getting close to putting its financial house in order were greeted with relief: The
Nikkei
TheStreet Recommends
surged at the open, rising 293.38 points, or 2.3%, to 13,173.35.
According to a
Reuters
report, Prime Minister
Keizo Obuchi
wants to provision as much as 67 trillion yen for the country's ailing banks.
Meanwhile, Brazil is unlikely to lower interest rates from the current 50% until early 1999, Foreign Trade Secretary Jose Roberto Mendonca de Barros said in an interview published Sunday in
O Estado de Sao Paulo
. The secretary said investor confidence was improving after his country and the IMF agreed broadly Thursday on fiscal measures that make up the first step toward an IMF loan,
Reuters
said.
Last week was a decidedly ugly one for the stock market. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
gained 1.5%, but the
S&P 500
fell 1.8%, the
Nasdaq Composite Index
surrendered 7.6% and the small-cap
Russell 2000
swooned nearly 9%.
Names like
Coca-Cola
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,
Caterpillar
(CAT) - Get Caterpillar Inc. Report
,
Gillette
(G) - Get Genpact Limited Report
,
Merrill Lynch
(MER)
,
Merck
(MRK) - Get Merck & Co., Inc. Report
and
Eastman Kodak
(EK)
, to name a handful, are all scheduled to report earnings this week.
As for this week's economic indicators,
retail sales
is due out Wednesday, the
Producer Price Index
is set for release Thursday, and on Friday, the
Consumer Price Index
is scheduled to be released.
Elsewhere in the news
The headline on the featured story in the Sunday
New York Times
business section screams: "Lusting After Prozac." The story says some time in the next five years, maybe as soon as 2001,
Eli Lilly's
(LLY) - Get Eli Lilly and Company Report
patents on antidepressant blockbuster
Prozac
will expire. Lilly and with six other pharmaceutical giants are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the hope they'll come up with the drug that can challenge Prozac.
The stakes: Sales of antidepressants are expected to reach $8 billion in the U.S. about the time Prozac's patent expires. Industry analysts say they expect any new brand-name bestseller won't be more effective than Prozac, but it likely will have fewer side effects.
Also, the introduction of a generic Prozac may lead cost-cutting managed care companies to require doctors to prescribe it rather than the more expensive antidepressants under development.
The cover story in
BusinessWeek
is the magazine's business-school rankings. Topping the list is the
Wharton School
at the
University of Pennsylvania
. Second is the
J.L. Kellogg School of Management
at
Northwestern University
; third, the
University of Chicago
; fourth, the
University of Michigan
; and rounding out the top five,
Harvard
.
Elsewhere in
BusinessWeek
, those out there afraid of a recession in the U.S. next year might take heart at a recap of last week's annual gathering of the
National Association for Business Economics
. The business economists see 1999 this way: Real gross domestic product will rise 2.2%, and consumer prices will rise 2.4%, while the jobless rate will rise just a bit to 4.7%.
Advanced Micro Devices
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is the subject of a brief piece with the following info: AMD chips, not those of
Intel
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, are inside the majority of personal computers now sold through computer stores in the U.S. In the first three weeks of September, nearly half of all desktop computers sold via retailers used AMD's
K6
chip. However,
International Data
analyst Kelly Henry figures 82% of all desktop personal computers sold in the U.S. this year will use Intel microprocessors.
BusinessWeek
offers up a bullish story on
Tricon Global Restaurants
(YUM) - Get Yum! Brands, Inc. Report
, the fast food company that
PepsiCo
spun off last year. The story cites
Merrill Lynch
analyst Peter Oakes, who estimates Tricon will finish 1998 with operating income of $962 million, an 18.5% increase over 1997.
Technical analysts also get some play in this week's issue. With the stock market's volatility of late, and the long-term outlook murky, technicians are getting more respect, the magazine states. Robert Doll Sr., executive vice president of equities for
Oppenheimer Funds
, is quoted as saying, in part: "In times of market turmoil and extreme volatility, technical analysis can be more helpful, because fundamental analysis, in the short term, doesn't particularly help you."
Sunbeam
(SOC)
is on the cover of
Barron's
this week. The cover has a cartoon of
Ron Perelman
standing before a mirror in a bathroom, and the reflection in the mirror is that of former Sunbeam chief
"Chainsaw" Al Dunlap
. The headline: "Poor Sunbeam." The article asks which is worse, suffering through Al Dunlap's regime or watching Ron Perelman come in to "rescue" the firm.
Barron's
offers a bullish story on drug-store chain
Walgreen
(WAG)
, but the outlook for hedge funds is negative.
Barron's
says hedge funds could face huge redemptions come Dec. 31.
Mutual fund manager John Schroer, who runs the open-end
Invesco Strategic Health Sciences
and the closed-end
Invesco Global Health Sciences
funds, which are up 13% and 7%, respectively this year, offers up to
Barron's
his "Healthy Choices." Among them:
American Home Products
(AHP)
,
AmeriSource Health
(AAS)
, Eli Lilly,
IMS Health
(RX)
,
McKesson
(MCK) - Get McKesson Corporation Report
,
Medtronic
(MDT) - Get Medtronic Plc Report
,
Merck
(MRK) - Get Merck & Co., Inc. Report
and
Sofamor Danek
(SDG) - Get iShares MSCI Global Sustainable Development Goals ETF Report
.