Once again, the chip sector helped spark off a rally in the markets as Intel issued upbeat comments about its own future this morning. Intelis CEO Craig Barrett said in an interview that inventory levels were easing and that there was no longer the same sort of overhang between production and demand as the company has seen for the last 6 months. Those comments allowed analysts and traders the chance to see that the chip sector may be seeing its bottom after all. Techs rallied, including chip vendors and PC manufacturers, but like yesterday the rally petered out as the morning wore on. Eight times bitten, once shy, seemed to be the rule of the day. From a Reuters report:
"A lot of money has been burned up and it is going to take time for investors to heal, to resave and redeploy," said Tom Sparico, managing director of equities at broker/dealer Bengal Partners. "It is going to take time for us to work our way back to the confidence levels that business investment will grow at a fast enough pace to add to earnings growth of something more than single digits."
The Nasdaq posted a 19 point gain, while the Dow gained 41 points of its own. Volume was moderate for both indexes as the Nasdaq traded almost 1.7 billion shares, and the Dow saw 1.2 billion shares exchange hands.
Industry News
Microsoft suffered a mild setback in its appeals process for its antitrust trial. The company had asked the appeals court that ruled the company illegally tied in its browser with its operating system to reconsider its decision. Fat chance, it seems, as the appeals court said that it would not reconsider. From a Reuters report:
"Weire pleased that the rehearing was denied," Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona said.
"Microsoft had no chance of succeeding with their motion for rehearing before the Court of Appeals," said Bob Lande, an antitrust professor with University of Baltimore School of Law. "The odds of the Court of Appeals admitting they made a mistake a month ago were infinitesimally small."
The DoJ also suffered a setback as the same court ruled not to waive the 52 day waiting period before sending the decision back down to a lower court. That decision effectively limits the DoJis chances of delaying the release of Windows XP.
Apple Industry News
It was another day for AAPL shareholders as the stock gained almost 4%, though in relatively light volume. The stock opened some 50 cents higher, and except for one brief dip close to yesterdayis close, traded in a relatively narrow trading range throughout the day. A rally in the last 45 minutes of trading left AAPL to close a nickel off the dayis high. Todayis trading range was 19.28 - 19.87.
Apple closed at 19.82, up 0.76 (+3.99%), on light volume of 4,501,100 shares trading hands.
The Nasdaq closed at 2087.38, up 19.00 (+0.92%), on volume of 1,681,010,000 trading hands.
The Dow closed at 10551.18, up 41.17 (+0.39%), on volume of 1,227,153,000 trading hands.
The S&P 500 closed at 1220.75, up 4.82 (+0.40%).
Adobe closed at 38.55, down 6 cents (-0.16%), on volume of 3,633,700 shares trading hands.
Akamai closed at 8.13, up 0.12 (+1.50%), on light volume of 1,059,900 shares trading hands. Apple is a large shareholder of Akamai.
Earthlink closed at 15.24, down 1.11 (-6.79%), on strong volume of 4,063,900 shares trading hands.
IBM closed at 108.80, up 1.74 (+1.63%), on light volume of 5,673,000 shares trading hands.
Macromedia closed at 18.07, up 0.19 (+1.06%), on "quick, call 911!" volume of 143,500 shares trading hands.
Motorola closed at 19.40, up 0.26 (+1.36%), on volume of 12,895,100 shares trading hands. Motorola manufactures the processors used in Appleis Macintosh line.
Dell closed at 28.43, up 1.25 (+4.60%), on volume of 28,423,200 shares trading hands.
Gateway closed at 11.21, up 0.61 (+5.75%), on strong volume of 3,342,300 shares trading hands.
Intel closed at 32.11, up 1.36 (+4.42%), on strong volume of 74,080,496 shares trading hands.
Microsoft closed at 67.45, up 0.98 (+1.47%), on light volume of 27,080,400 shares trading hands.
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