Bad housing numbers did not do much to hurt the market yesterday and good consumer sentiment figures did not help today. The Reuters/University of Michigan poll for late September yielded a figure of 73.5. That is the highest number since early in 2008. The data may mean that consumers believe the recession is over. Traders did not appear to be heartened, and a poor report on durable goods had the prevailing effect on trading all day. The Commerce Department said orders for goods expected to last at least three years fell 2.4%.

Here are the unofficial numbers:

DJIA: 9666.48 -40.96 (-0.42%)

NASDAQ: 2090.92 -16.69 (-0.79%)

S&P 500: 1044.44 -6.34 (-0.6%)

Today was another one of those days where it was hard to tell if the market was up. The market gapped up and then posted a great morning rally, and then proceeded to give back most of the gains from noon until late in the afternoon. Housing was dismal, producer prices were down, and Bernanke and Paulson testified about the TARP usage.

Below are today's unofficial closing bell levels:
Analyst Calls: Top Upgrades and Top Downgrades

Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. (NYSE: BUD) is no more..... The merger was completed today with InBev and the stock will now be European listed and be called Anheuser-Busch InBev. Shareholders of common stock receive $70.00 per share in cash as part of this $52 billion merger.

Corning Inc. (NYSE: GLW) gave disappointing LCD panel guidance which was "below" the $1.1 to $1.2 billion in revenues previously offered and "at the low end of below" the $0.20 to $0.28 EPS range previously offered just a few weeks ago. Shares were down 7% right before the the close.

If you were looking for another hard day of profit taking on a summer Friday, the markets escaped the hangman. A barely positive durable goods of big ticket items was enough to send the pessimists to the showers and gave the bulls a little more ammo. Throw in an oil ticker showing a drop of more than $2.00 to almost $123.00 per barrel and that's all that was needed. Look at bond yields and you'll see we gave back almost all of yesterday's move.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:
DJIA 11368.33 (+19.05)
S&P500 1257.65 (+5.11)
NASDAQ 2310.53 (+30.42)
10YR T-NOTE 4.111% (+0.095%)
TOP ANALYST UPGRADES
TOP ANALYST DOWNGRADES
Select Short Sales Data

Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) tripled earnings posted EPS of $0.78 vs. $0.64 estimates. The stock was up more than 3% in pre-open but was up almost 9% at $55.45 in the final minutes of the day.

Crocs Inc. (NASDAQ: CROX) led the garbage stocks after a very ugly earnings warning last night. It now sees sales for all of 2008 modestly lower than 2007 and is now only targeting a break-even result for 2008. Retailers were noted as keeping inventory re-orders at low levels, which is hard to blame them considering the ugly shoe fad has already started its workdown. Shares were down 44% at $4.99 after shares had already sold of more than 80% from 52-week highs.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Laura Bush was wearing "a pink skirt-suit" when she rang the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange today, marking the first time, ever, that a First Lady has rung the closing bell. The White House website says brightly that her visit was made to "symbolize the vital contribution that women bring to a growing global economy."

And what better way to symbolize women in economy, everywhere, than to wear pink?

The Journal pointed out that she pronounced the floor trading "interesting" after receiving a description of the NYSE's workings from Spear Leeds & Kellogg.

Laura Bush has certainly worked hard for women's rights in her time as First Lady, but has labored much of this second term deep in the shadow of her husband. She's visiting New York City by herself this week, attending a conference on global literacy, accepting an award, and talking at the Clinton Global Initiative. She'll also talk at the UN about Burma's humanitarian crisis.

The history-making step at the NYSE seems at once flamboyant and girlish, feminista and feminine. Why ring the bell now? Why wear pink? As a woman in business, I'm at once bemused and a little insulted at this would-be economic role model. Will anyone remember Laura's actions as a mark on the timeline for feminism, or women, or pink -- or is it just a trivia footnote that will be quickly forgotten by all but the most dedicated Bushophiles? What do you think?

Everyone's singing a new Zune today following the unveiling of Microsoft's iPod competitor (née killer), and that Zune is brown. While no one seemed quite sure, the reaction was generally positive; watchers thought the music sharing option was rather brilliant, and the interface intuitive and simple.

The question on everyone's minds is, still, how much? Guesses tend to end up around $299.

Microsoft investors seemed pleased, and drove the stock up 35 cents, or 1.35%, to a comfortable $26.33.

This was actually a quiet day for Time Warner (TWX), even with the stock down 0.4% to close at $16.91. There was some good news for TWX when Time Warner Telecom (TWTC) announced that TWX and affiliates were selling some 27.5 million shares. This is actually good as it allows TWX to focus on its own entities a tad more, and allows the company to unlock some of the hidden value in its assets. That won't generate enough cash that the bond rating firms will take much note, but it won't be bad for them at all either. The volume was pretty normal, with 21.9 million shares traded compared to an average daily volume of 20.5 million.

The move probably wasn't even a "Punish Cramer" after he said "BUY TWX" yesterday because of how his call on Hansen (HANS) went so poorly in the immediate day after. It seems that the stock was just doing a healthy pullback because of overbought indicators. That isn't indicative of a bunch of short sellers and it isn't indicative of a big institutional investor or key insider bailing out. This is just some clean profit taking on overbought conditions that we had previously telegraphed. When stocks go up seven out of eight or nine days, that happens.

Options activity was quiet a day ahead of expiration date, so there wasn't any added options volatility causing any artificial moves. I was shocked that I had to go all the way out to the January 2008 contracts just to find contracts that posted over 1,000 traded on the day at 3:15 PM. The JAN08 $15 PUTS traded 5,495 contracts as of that time. Someone made a highly speculative bet in an options trade by purchasing 1,362 of the JAN08 $30 CALLS for a $0.05. That is someone looking for a highly leveraged trade that they will make a fortune on if the stock starts to rally significantly.

Time Warner shareholders have been biting their collective nails for the past few weeks, wondering what would happen with the second quarter earnings, due out tomorrow morning before the bell. What news will accompany the financials? Will AOL subscriptions be down yet again? Will the board be doing something radical: offering AOL emails for free, spinning off a portion of the company, or (who knows) creating yet another video sharing site?

The nails were bitten down another 1.52% today in anticipation as the stock fell 25 cents to $16.25, and down a few more cents in after-hours trading. This isn't cause for alarm, though: the price is several ticks away from the 52-week low of $15.70. Keep posted tomorrow as we'll be live blogging the earnings call at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

Investors are a hopeful kind of bird. Yahoo! stock, along with many in the tech sector, has been in the doldrums as of late. Earnings are coming out in about an hour, though, and this makes the investor bird preen its feathers and buy in advance of the announcement. Despite intraday lows that were down signficantly from yesterday's close, Yahoo! ended the day at $32.17, up 33 cents or 1.04%.

But Piper Jaffray, among other analysts, are predicting good things, including the consensus 11 cents per share profit (down from 13 cents in the year-ago quarter) and positive news in the search ad revenue department. Check back at 5 p.m. Eastern, when we'll be liveblogging the earnings report.

Poor eBay. Surely the recent slide is not all its own fault. In fact, tech stocks (and especially Apple) are being blamed for its decline today. Yet it's special (bad special) that I had to dust off a three-year chart to show you today.

Just gaze at that. Ick! eBay is, indeed, at a low not seen for nearly three years, closing today at $26.58, down 64 cents or 2.35% on the day. It's not all Apple's fault, to be sure; investors are worried with concerns over the company's management trickle-out (it's not enough to be called an "exodus" -- yet), and perhaps there is some lingering competitive concern over the move by Christie's to hold its own auctions, or worries over Google Checkout. Either way, times are not the best for the company's stock.

Microsoft joined the rest of the BloggingStocks universe today, closing down significantly. For MSFT, losing 57 cents took the stock down 2.4%, to $23.15, and it was despite an opening bell spike.

None of the market seemed to be much affected by individual company news today, although there was a lot of buzz today about Mr. Softie, with a number of MSFT watchers eager to see what Steve Ballmer will say tomorrow morning in his uncharacteristic chat with investors. And later this afternoon, news of pricing for Microsoft Vista ($450 is the word on the 'net) had lots of bloggers biting, wondering whether it was worth your while to pay more for your operating system than your computer (despite the bells and whistles everyone's raving over). Ryan Block at Engadget muses, "when you consider the fact that the single-license full install retail MSRP of XP Pro is still $300 US, it's not too drastically unrealistic. Don't get us wrong, we're not exactly endorsing snapping up operating systems that cost more than the machines they run on but, you know, it is Ultimate freaking Vista, dude."

The reports on Office Ulimate MSRP: $679. That's some expensive PowerPoint slides. Maybe I should sign up for pay-as-you-go. Dude. And that brings up an excellent question: if the geeks are willing to pay, will corporations follow suit?

What's the problem with iPods? Supply has been an issue, with customers and retailers joining together to bicker over that last iPod Nano come holiday time. If Apple has anything to do with it, next Christmas it will be a little easier. That is, if you're a sucker for anything that rolls out of a vending machine. It seems as if there will be 180 of the new Zoom @ Macy's vending machines -- scheduled to stock iPods -- in stores by the fall. I, for one, would much rather buy the new $29 Nike+iPod Sport in a vending machine in one of my fave running spots. Now there's an interesting business plan!

If investors heard about the new vending machines, though, they weren't impressed. AAPL was down 23 cents to $63.15 in the same end-of-day malaise that struck the rest of the market. It's a pity, as AAPL opened extremely strong, up to $65.19 in the first minutes of the trading day on below-average volume.

Confident about Vista release dates? That's what Microsoft "Windows guru" Jim Allchin told Reuters in an interview today. He's the co-president of the company's Platforms & Services Division, and the one responsible for Vista, the upcoming operating system update. The market has been highly skeptical of Microsoft's ability to release the software on time; ever since Gartner released a report indicating Vista would hit the shelves months behind schedule.

Evidently, the market remains skeptical. MSFT was way up in the morning to a respectable $23.38, but plunged at the end of the day in a market-wide sell-off, ending down nine cents at $22.79. Evidently, Allchin's confidence didn't have much sway in the face of uncertainty over commodity prices and, perhaps, the continuing incredulity of MSFT investors.

Ah, poor Softie. Where have you gone wrong? In a day when the market was generally up, Microsoft flirted with its new two-year low, closing down 27 cents to $22.56, a drop of 1.18%. MSFT took a dive in the opening minutes and never recovered. Why so low, Softie?

The volume was relatively average, so all we can do is speculate. Many Apple watchers were surprised today to discover that the consumer versions of the new MacBook and the little Mac Mini don't meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft Vista when it's released ... sometime. Is the checklist for Vista so draconian that investors can't stomach the pain of having to purchase a special graphics adaptor? Must be.

Apple was plugging along today, basking in the glow of its new (and black) MacBook, and Steve Jobs was probably patting himself on his back after yesterday's lovely write-up in the Wall Street Journal. I'm so smart, he was probably thinking, those naysayers just wish they'd invested in Apple way back when!

And then. Everybody started selling. Before MacBook could rack up its nth sale (rumored to be good even by Apple's projections), before Jobs could reach around for that acrobatic back pat, the market had hammered APPL to the tune of $2.08 -- a whopping 3.19%. The stock ended the day at $63.18.

Despite the sell-off, reviewers can't say enough good about the MacBook; MacWorld said it was faster than the fastest iBook G4 in almost all of its tests. And Forbes went raving on about the new Manhattan Apple store (in a historically dank and failure-ridden space, however). So why the big sell-off? Could it be a side-effect of bad news at rival Dell? If you sold today, what were you thinking?

Apple always has to be different. But today, everyone cheered as the company brought out a version of their pretty laptop, the MacBook, in matt black (yes, that's the same finish as your boring old PC). Our sister site, Engadget, took the MacBook for a spin and declared it "a pretty freaking great value" (but they're not doing black, for the record). The Apple Insider hails the removable (by an actual user!) hard disks. No more purely cosmetic screws!

It wasn't all black hearts and roses, though; MacWorld UK today mourned the locking down of OS X. Thanks to concerns of piracy, Apple closed down its open source code so that developers can no longer tinker with its operating system. Bad for pirates is also bad for very advanced users; says Tom Yager, "there are ways to address the piracy issue without stripping the critical and defining quality of openness from OS X."

AAPL stock responded by ticking up 25 cents to $65.26 on lower-than-average volume. Evidently the market, while intrigued, isn't ready to jump unreservedly on board for black is the new MacBook.

[Photo redjar]