Ken flagg's Blog – April 2011 Archive (89)

Following is the text of the employment cost report released by the Labor Department.

EMPLOYMENT COST INDEX - MARCH 2011

Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 0.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, for the 3-month period ending March 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries (which make up about 70 percent of compensation…

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 12:40 PM

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in March indicates that the economic recovery is proceeding at a moderate pace and overall conditions in the labor market are improving gradually.

 Household spending and business investment in equipment and software continue to expand. However, investment in nonresidential structures is still weak, and the housing sector continues to be depressed. Commodity prices have…

Futures are showing a modest bid again this morning, with S&P futures +2 vs. fair value and DJ futures +36. The early bid follows a mixed performance overseas, and precedes today's highly anticipated FOMC policy decision, which will be accompanied by the first-ever Q&A session with Fed Chairman Bernanke this afternoon. Today's Fed format is as follows -- the initial policy statement will be released at 12:30 pm ET, followed by Bernanke's conference call…

 stockmarketfunding.com notes AMZN continues to be a story of contradictory themes: revs modestly exceed expectations, reflecting strong organic sales growth of 36% (39% ex. Japan); however, margins continue to worsen as a result of expanding distribution centers globally and aggressive marketing of Prime. As a result,…

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings: KEYN +9.9%, RLOC +5.6%, SIMG +4.5%, BWLD +4.0%, FORM +1.9%, PNRA +1.4%.

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: SEM +9.7% (Select Medical issues Q1 guidance; reaffirms 2011 outlook), REGN +7.9% (Regeneron Pharms and Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) report positive phase…

Broad-based buying on the back of better-than-expected earnings took both the Dow and S&P 500 to their best level in almost three years. The Nasdaq actually extended its three-year high.

Although there is some uncertainty about what might be said in tomorrow's FOMC policy statement, market participants were in the mood to buy today. In turn, stocks were up more than 1% at session highs and advancing share…

Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) is trading higher by more than 12% today following the release of the FDA Briefing Documents for its Hepatitis-C drug candidate Telaprevir. An FDA Panel will discuss Telaprevir on April 28th, to review the drug and vote on whether or not they would recommend the drugs approval to the FDA.

Shares of VRTX were weaker yesterday following the release of Merck's (MRK) own Briefing…

European markets are now closed; stock markets across Europe performed as follows:

·                     UK's FTSE: +0.9%

·                     Germany's DAX: +0.8%

·                     France's CAC: +0.6%

·                     Spain's IBEX:…

The following are today's most active stocks ranked by volume and relative volume, categorized by sectors (over $300 mln market cap and 100K average daily volume).

Today's top 20 volume

·                     Technology: INTC (40.97 mln +1.71%), MSFT (31.59 mln +2.46%), CSCO (28.72 mln +1.87%), LWSN (25.49 mln -8.08%), SMOD (14.95 mln +12.59%), S (14.5 mln -0.1%),…

The following are today's top 20 percentage gainers and top 20 percentage losers, categorized by sectors (over $300 mln market cap and 100K average daily volume).

Today's top 20 % gainers

·                     Technology: REDF (14.49 +26.66%), IIVI (58.01 +20.68%), SMOD (9.21 +12.59%), WAT (98.83 +8.93%), RBCN (29.55 +8.76%), SIFY (7.43…

Biggest point gainers: IIVI (57.85 +9.78), CMI (116.80 +8.60), WAT (98.78 +8.05), MTD (181.40 +6.80), NEU (181.95 +6.62), VRTX (53.90 +5.86), MA (277.09 +5.66), CRDN (50.80 +5.42), ASH (62.45 +5.40), CRS (49.76 +4.80), HUM (77.20 +4.52), XIV (171.68 +4.49), SIAL (71.66 +4.39), WPO (425.33 +4.35), LO (103.85 +4.25), CHE (70.99 +4.12), GRA (45.18 +3.93), CSL (46.80 +3.82), AMG (108.94 +3.78), MLI (39.23 +3.75), WTI (27.30 +3.73).…

The S&P 500 is yp 13 (0.9%) to 1348, the Dow is up 117 (0.9%) to 12596 and the Nasdaq is up 25 (0.9%) to 2581. Action has come on light NYSE and avg NASDAQ volume (NYSE 351 mln vs. avg of 406 mln; NASDAQ 948 mln vs. avg. of 921 mln), with advancers outpacing decliners (NYSE advancers/decliners 2211/739, NASDAQ advancers/decliners 1751/753) and with new highs outpacing new lows (NYSE new highs/new lows 280/5 and NASDAQ new highs/new lows…

Ashland beats by $0.09, beats on revs (57.05 ) : Reports Q2 (Mar) earnings of $0.86 per share, $0.09 better than the Thomson Reuters consensus of $0.77; revenues rose 9.4% year/year to $1.56 bln vs the $1.49 bln consensus.

TZOO is trading ~11% lower today following a report out last night that Facebook will be entering the daily deals space, an emerging market popularized by Groupon. According to a NY Times article (link here) out last night, Facebook is launching its deals product in 5 cities today. There has been many firms entering this business on the success seen from Groupon…

Following a dull, low-volume day of trade, market participants have a few more cues to follow this morning. So far, their reaction to today's headlines has been generally positive, such that stock futures trade with a healthy lead over fair value. Although Asia's major averages succumbed to further selling overnight, Europe 's major bourses re-opened from an extended holiday weekend to post modest gains. The latest round of earnings has featured better-than-expected results…

·                     Stifel Nicolaus notes incremental subscriber growth remains intact; ending subs totaled 23.6 mln, up 69% y/y. It notes that subscriber growth faces tough comps throughout FY11, nevertheless firm expects Netflix to end the year with 31.5 mln subscribers. Mgmt is carefully tempering investor expectations for the balance of 2011, in its view, as the co ramps up investments in international mkts, incremental content and marketing to grow…