Sector performance (% change on day): Financials
(+2.53%), Tech (+2.18%), Health Care (+1.60%), Consumer Staples (+0.58%),
Consumer Discretionary (+2.57%), Industrials (+2.47%), Energy (+1.61%), Telecom
(+1.20%), Materials (+2.42%), Utilities (+1.68%).
Dow +203.82 at 10005.96, Nasdaq
+49.80 at 2105.32, S&P +20.13
at 1066.63
[BRIEFING.COM] Broad-based buying on the back of a strong quarterly report
from Cisco and a couple of pleasing economic reports helped stocks net robust
gains ahead of tomorrow's potentially pivotal nonfarm payrolls report.
Cisco (CSCO 23.93, +0.64) won support for itself and other large-cap tech
issues by posting better-than-expected top and bottom line results for its
latest quarter and announcing that it has authorized an additional $10 billion
to add to its share repurchase plan, which now stands at roughly $13 billion.
Cisco went one step further and issued a solid outlook during its conference
call.
Strength among large-cap tech issues helped hand the Nasdaq its best
single-session percentage advance since July. Meanwhile, all 30 Dow components
advanced and helped the blue chip index close above 10,000 for the first time in
two weeks.
The positive tone among this session's participants was also helped by news that
third quarter nonfarm productivity surged 9.5% in its preliminary report. That
is considerably better than the 6.5% increase that had been widely expected. The
surge marked the largest gain in productivity since 2003. It was fueled by the
sharp increase in third quarter output and the considerable drop in hours
worked. With job conditions still weak, unit labor costs dropped 5.2% in the
third quarter. They were expected to fall 4.2%.
The latest initial jobless claims total came in 512,000, down 20,000 from the
previous week and not as bad as the 522,000 initial claims that had been widely
expected. Continuing claims came in at 5.75 million, which is in stride with
what had been forecast and down from 5.82 million in the previous week. That
decline, though, is primarily rooted in the trend that unemployed workers are
losing their benefits, not finding jobs.
That trend has many market watchers looking ahead to the government's official
nonfarm jobs report, which will be released before the opening bell Friday
morning. The consensus forecast is that the October unemployment will hit 9.9%,
which would be the highest level since 1982.
Despite concerns for that matter, all 10 major sectors finished the session with
a gain. Only consumer staples failed to gain more than 1%. Disappointment over
the pharmacy benefit management business at CVS Caremark (CVS 28.87,
-7.28) overshadowed the company's better-than-expected earnings and additional
share repurchase authorization, and caused the stock to drag on the consumer
staples sector. Consumer staples, as a group, settled with a relatively modest
gain of 0.6%.
Insurers also lagged as participants shunned Allstate (ALL 29.05, -0.57)
and Prudential Financial (PRU 44.64, -1.92). Allstate missed the
consensus earnings estimate, but Prudential actually posted a positive earnings
surprise. Despite their weakness, financials still advanced 2.5%.
Only the consumer discretionary sector had a better gain. It advanced 2.6% in
the face of mixed monthly same-store sales results from retailers.
..Nasdaq 100 +2.4%. ..S&P Midcap 400
+2.4%. ..Russell 2000 +3.2%.
The top-performing and worst-performing S&P 500 industry groups for Thursday:
