Thursday, August 5, 1999
Markets
For three straight sessions, stocks sold off on early rallies to close lower. Today they got the selloff out of the way early, with much happier results.
Stocks tanked early amid some bad productivity numbers from the
Labor Department
(see below). But large cap stocks battled back throughout the day and, finally, despite decidedly weak market internals, all the major proxies finished in the black.
The turnaround in tech and Internet stocks was most dramatic. The
Nasdaq Composite Index
gained 25.82 to 2565.82 and
TheStreet.com Intenet Sector
index added 23.64 to 513.55. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
advanced 119.05 to 10,793.82 and the
S&P 500
picked up 8.38 to 1313.71. And the small-cap
Russell 2000
eked out a 0.05 point gain to close at 429.75.
The 30-year Treasury bond gained 28/32 to 89 1/32, its yield falling to 6.053%.
The big European indices all finished deep in the red, paced by Germany's
Xetra Dax
, which lost about 3%.
Asian markets got hit hard overnight. Hong Kong's
Hang Seng
dropped 336.68, or 2.5%, to 13,254.34, while Tokyo's
Nikkei
dropped 327.19, or 1.9%, to 17,358.19.
More markets news and commentary are available in
TSC's
Markets section.
Companies
Cardinal Health
(CAH) - Get Report
is buying privately held Woodstock, Ill.-based
Automatic Liquid Packaging
, a custom manufacturer of sterile liquid pharmaceuticals and other health-care products, for $390 million in stock.
CIT
(CIT) - Get Report
agreed to buy
Newcourt Credit
(NCT)
for about $2.7 billion in stock, about a third less than it originally offered for the Canadian commercial lender, according to reports in
The Globe and Mail
and the
Financial Post
, each of which cited unnamed sources.
Lucent
(LU)
canceled plans to sell its small business sales unit -- which would have meant the transfer about 2,000 employees and 700,000 customers -- to
LSME
, a startup headed by former Lucent and
AT&T
(T) - Get Report
executive Susan Mandl. The financial terms of the now-dead deal were never disclosed.
More news on companies and stocks are available in
TSC's
Stock News section.
Tech
The Net IPOs just keep on coming:
Auto dealership Web site manager
Cobalt
(CBLT:Nasdaq) lost 2 3/4, or 25%, to 8 1/4 in its trading debut. Lead underwriter
BancBoston Robertson Stephens
priced Cobalt at $11 a share last night, below its $13 to $15 pricing range.
Homestore.com
(HOMS:Nasdaq) picked up 2 3/4, or 13.8%, to 22 3/4 after being priced top-range at $20 a share by
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
. HomeStore.com's initial pricing range was $8 to $10 a share.
Interactive Pictures
(IPIX:Nasdaq) gained 11/16 to 18 11/16 after being priced top-range at $18 a share last night by
J.P. Morgan
.
E-commerce investment group
Internet Capital
(ICGE:Nasdaq) surged 12 3/8, or 103.1%, to 24 7/16, having been priced top-range at $12 a share by
Merrill Lynch
.
Elsewhere in new tech issues,
Mission Critical Software
(MCSW:Nasdaq) advanced 9 1/2, or 59.4%, to 25 7/16 in its first day of trading.
Hambrecht & Quist
priced Mission Critical at $16 a share last night.
Jabil Circuit
(JBL) - Get Report
set plans to buy Hong Kong-based electronics maker
Get Manufacturing
for $250 million in stock.
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
is planning to offer low-priced, or perhaps even free, Internet access in an attempt to take on
America Online's
(AOL)
dial-up Net-access business,
The Wall Street Journal
reported.
More tech news and commentary are available in
TSC's
Tech Stocks section.
General News
The Labor Department released figures showing
initial jobless claims
at 279,000 for the week ended July 31, below the expected 284,000 and up from last week's 275,000.
Labor also released figures showing second-quarter nonfarm productivity rising only 1.3%, the smallest gain since the second quarter of 1998. That's a half-percentage point below expectations, and down from a revised jump of 3.6% in the first quarter. Unit labor costs swelled 3.8%, the largest jump since the fourth-quarter of 1997. Economists had expected a 2.2% hop, vs. the modest revised increase of 0.8% in last quarter.
International
U.K. cable firm
Telewest Communications
(TWSTY)
confirmed it plans to launch high-speed Internet services next year with the help of major shareholder Microsoft.
More international news and commentary are available in
TSC's
International section.
Elsewhere
After submitting to what must have been the most humiliating medical examination ever, Kathy Jager -- a 56-year-old nurse, grandmother and world-class "oldies" athlete -- was officially declared a woman this week by the
World Association of Veteran Athletes
,
The Arizona Republic
reported yesterday. Fellow athletes had complained that Jager was really a man after the beefy sprinter set a record for women over 50 in the 100-meter dash during the Wava's world championship games. "It is obvious, if you look at her, why the complaint was lodged," said a male athlete from the Australian team.
