Wednesday, January 20, 1999

Stocks closed mixed and Chancellor Media considers selling its assets.

Author:: Thomas Lepri
Publish date:: Jan 20, 1999 5:02 PM EST

Markets

U.S. stocks closed mixed after a late selloff, with the Internet sector suffering worst, and tech stocks managing to hold on to a measure of their earlier gains. Until the downturn, the downbeat

comments on the stock market from

Federal Reserve

Chairman

Alan Greenspan

(see below) seemed to have had little effect.

The

Dow Jones Industrial Average

dropped 19.31 to 9,335.91, and the small-cap

Russell 2000

lost a scant 0.28 to 430.61. The

S&P 500

rose 4.61 to 1,256.61, while the

Nasdaq Composite Index

gained 7.36 to 2,415.53.

TheStreet.com Internet Sector

index lost 39.41 to 508.85.

European bourses closed higher, as did Asian markets, as Hong Kong's

Hang Seng

gained 24.80 to 10,314.91, and Japan's

Nikkei 225

picked up 257.61 to close at 14,028.05.

For more markets action and news, click

here.

Companies

American Airlines

parent

AMR

(AMR)

said its fourth-quarter profit fell 13% to $182 million.

A $495 million charge sliced

Bristol-Myers Squibb's

(BMY) - Get Report

1998 fourth-quarter earnings to $413 million. Without the charge, the company's profit increased 13%.

Caterpillar

(CAT) - Get Report

reported fourth-quarter earnings of $301 million, down from $451 million a year ago.

Having retained

BT Alex. Brown

to advise the company on ways to restructure,

Chancellor Media

(AMFM)

said it's considering selling some or all of its assets.

General Motors

(GM) - Get Report

today reported fourth-quarter earnings of $3.25 a share, up 55% from last year and easily beating analysts estimates of $2.65 a share.

Newport News Shipbuilding

(NNS)

announced that it will buy fellow shipbuilder

Avondale Industries

(AVDL) - Get Report

in a stock deal worth about $470 million.

New York Life Insurance's

board of directors voted to keep the company a mutual insurer.

Suffering from low wood prices,

Weyerhaeuser

said that profits for the fourth quarter of 1998 were 69% lower than the previous year.

For more news on companies and stocks, click

here.

Tech

High-speed Internet service provider

@Home

(ATHM) - Get Report

yesterday agreed to buy the search engine

Excite

(XCIT)

for $6.7 billion in stock.

TSC's

Kevin Petrie

weighed in yesterday on the deal's impact on the bandwidth industry.

Dutch software company

Baan

said that revised restructuring charges of about $160 million will contribute to an expected fourth-quarter loss of $250 million.

Microsoft

(MSFT) - Get Report

late yesterday reported second-quarter earnings of 73 cents a share, easily beating analysts' estimates of 59 cents a share.

The

Supreme Court

yesterday refused to hear a case in which

SBC Communications

(SBC)

US West

(USW)

and

Bell Atlantic

(BEL)

attacked the 1996 telecommunications law that kept them from selling long-distance service in America. San Antonio-based Baby Bell company

SBC Communications

(SBC)

will acquire

Comcast's

(CMCSK)

cellular business for about $1.7 billion in cash and debt.

Texas Instruments

(TXN) - Get Report

reported fourth-quarter earnings of 59 cents a share, beating Street estimates by a handy nickel.

For more tech news and commentary, click

here.

International

British Aerospace

yesterday agreed to buy

General Electric PLC's

Marconi Electronics for about $12.7 billion in a deal that will create a U.K. defense group on the scale of U.S. juggernauts such as

Boeing

(BA) - Get Report

and

Lockheed Martin

(LMT) - Get Report

Sweden and Norway said they will merge state-owned telecoms

Telia AB

and

Telenor AS

into a single company. The governments then plan to sell 33.2% of the company to investors.

Japan's

Toyo Trust

and

Sanwa Bank

today announced a broad alliance one day after

Mitsui Trust

and

Chuo Trust

said they were in merger talks.

For more international news and commentary, click

here.

General News

Addressing the

House Ways and Means Committee

today, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan said: "The level of stock prices would appear to envision substantially greater growth of profits than has been experienced of late." Greenspan also reiterated his uneasiness with the notion of investing Social Security funds in the stock market.

Commerce Department

figures show housing starts are now at an 11-year high.

In a meeting with two top

NATO

generals, Serbian President

Slobodan Milosevic

maintained his opposition to a

U.N.

investigation of the Serbian massacre of 45 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.