The Noonday Market

The market is building on yesterday’s late-day surge. So far, it’s the cyclicals leading the charge. The Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index (^CYC) is up 1.87%. Dow Jones tracks 100 industry groups, right now, 94 are higher. The energy and materials sectors are doing the best.
Gold is higher today. The metal fell late yesterday even after Tuesday’s big plunge.
This morning, the Labor Department said that unemployment claims dropped to 295,000 last week. That’s the lowest level in four months. Speaking of employment, McKinsey says that the jobless rate in Sweden is 15%, nearly three times the government’s estimate. Wow.
In the debt market, once again we have a split day. Yields at the long end of the yield curve are higher, while short-term rates are slightly lower. Once you get past maturities of five years, the yield curve is pretty darn flat.
I’ll have to give Bear Stearns (BSC) the award for best broker earnings of the week. The company earned $3.72 a share, 60 cents more than estimates. Both Goldman (GS) and Lehman (LEH) reported good earnings earlier this week, but it didn’t help their stocks.
There was some good news yesterday for Harley-Davidson (HDI), one of our Buy List stocks. Anthony Gikas, the analyst at Piper Jaffray, polled 30 Harley dealers and 28 said that business is meeting or exceeding expectations. The stock is trading at less than 13 times next year’s earnings. Also, the New York Times talked with Kevin Rollins at Dell (DELL).
Oh, and thanks to everyone who wrote in to complain about my World Cup bashing. Interestingly, approximately 98.4% of you mentioned baseball. So I have to admit, yesterday’s Saudi-Tunisia game was very good. The Germany-Poland game was also good except for the German’s late goal. I was really hoping to see the Poles walk away with a tie.
Two quick headlines to note. First, this one made me giggle. The other is from the New York Post on Dick Grasso taking the fifth 168 times, “Grasso Pass-o.” You gotta love the NYP for its headlines.

Posted by on June 15th, 2006 at 11:53 am


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