The markets got some extra relief today as weekly jobless claims only rose by 6,000 to 371,000. The Philly Fed also showed that manufacturing contracted slower than expected as output fell by 0.7% in April. Below are the unofficial closing prices for major index levels:
China Architectural Engineering, Inc. (AMEX: RCH) enjoyed another massive day as its stock rose another 23% to $10.17 late in the day based on construction, architecture, and engineering needs that will be necessary in China after that earthquake.
CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) announced Thursday it has signed a deal to buy CNet Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: CNET) for $11.50 a share in cash. CNet operates not only the CNET site, but also ZDNet, GameSpot.com, TV.com, mp3.com and others. The deal values CNet at about $1.8 billion and push CBS to among the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States. CBS shares are down 2.9% in premarket trading while CNET shares are of course up over 42% to $11.31.
IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI)'s Ask.com has bought Lexico Publishing Group LLC, the parent of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com among other sites. Earlier this year, Lexico already agreed to be sold to Answers Corp (NASDAQ: ANSW), but the latter couldn't secure the necessary funds. Now, Lexico sold itself to Ask.com, for an undisclosed amount, although the number people are throwing around is $100 million. Could this acquisition help IACI gain -- even a little -- on market leader Google?
United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAUA) and Continental Airlines Inc. (NYSE: CAL), dropping ideas of a merger, are now talking about forming an alliance to still gain some benefits of working together. United appears relentless in its attempts to help its bottom line through a merger or an alliance. While talking to Continental about an alliance, it is still negotiating with US Airways Group (NYSE: LCC).
After hitting a one-year high of $27.99 in December, the stock hit a one-year low of $18.05 in January. INTC opened this morning at $23.85. So far today the stock has hit a low of $23.76 and a high of $24.29. As of 12:15, INTC is trading at $24.16, up $0.40 (1.7%). The chart for INTC looks bullish and deteriorating slightly, while S&P gives the stock a neutral 3 Stars (out of 5) hold rating.
For a bullish hedged play on this stock, I would consider a July bull-put credit spread below the $21 range. A bull-put credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of put options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think but still leverage nice returns. For this particular trade, we will make a 6.7% return in just two months as long as INTC is above $21 at July expiration. Intel would have to fall by more than 13% before we would start to lose money. Learn more about this type of trade here.
According to people familiar with the matter, Robert Verrone, one of the most zealous commercial real-estate lenders during the industry's boom, will leave Wachovia Corporation (NYSE: WB) within the next week, the Wall Street Journal reported.
WEB SITES:
Bloomberg reported that the Department of Justice is probing whether UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) helped clients evade American taxes. In an e-mailed statement, the firm said one senior bank employee was "briefly detained" by authorities.
Bloomberg also reported that Vallejo, California's city council voted to go into bankruptcy. Officials said that after talks with labor unions failed to win salary concessions from police and fire fighters, the city does not have enough money to pay its bills.
According to a rumor, TechCrunch reported that the Yahoo Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) board of directors yesterday authorized Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock, rather than CEO Jerry Yang, to call Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer about re-starting negotiations.
U.S. stock futures were lower early Wednesday as investors, worried about inflation, await data on pending home sales and labor costs. Earnings news in focus this morning comes from tech bellwether Cisco Systems, which gave a cautious outlook, and from Walt Disney, which reported good results.
Despite starting the day on a down note, as oil futures remained high, U.S. stocks closed higher on Tuesday, mostly due to some reassuring comments made on a Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) conference call. The Dow industrials ended up 51 points, or 0.40%, the S&P 500 rose 10 points, or 0.77%, and the Nasdaq Composite finished 19 points, or 0.78%, higher.
Today investors will finally have some data to sink in their teeth. First quarter labor productivity and unit costs is out at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Economists expect productivity to rise 1.5% in the first quarter, but for unit labor costs to climb as well.
Also on the docket today are March pending home sales data to be released at 10:00 a.m. and which probably fell another 1%.
After that, weekly crude inventories are scheduled to be reported. Crude futures have held up near $122 a barrel despite the dollar advancing against the yen and the euro.
Shares of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) fell in after-hours trading after the world's largest software maker failed to wow investors.
Net income at the Redmond, Wash., company fell to $4.39 billion, or 47 cents a share, on flat revenue of $14.5 billion. Analysts had expected profit of 44 cents on revenue of $14.5 billion. Revenue at Microsoft's Business Division, Client and Server and Tools businesses, the company's largest, fell during the quarter. The others, including the Entertainment and Devices unit, rose.
Pacific Crest analyst Brendan Barnicle told Bloomberg News that "people were expecting more of a blowout. It's a decent quarter. It's not a great quarter by any means, and people were expecting a great quarter.''
Readers of this space know that the investment bias is toward large-cap companies with demonstrated business models and a competitive advantage in established markets, preferably with a favorable global trend as a support. With this in mind, Intel is worth an evaluation.
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is the world's largest semiconductor maker, as measured by revenue and unit shipments, and is the dominant microprocessor manufacturer for personal computers.
In general, analysts expect F2008 revenue to increase 5-7%, after an 8% increase in F2007. The conventional wisdom in semiconductor analysis land now suggests that smaller/more-portable computer forms and media-rich PDAs will drive strong PC and PDA microprocessor sales.
Further, Intel remains the leader in next-generation chip technology, and its product mix remains superior. Gross margins should increase, as a result of lower unit costs and improved plant utilization. Also, high-performance chip prices should increase noticeably.
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the good stuff out there -- and there's a lot of it -- will keep us going up.
How high can we go? That's pretty much the only question worth asking after you put in a bottom, as we did after the Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) (Cramer's Take) collapse.
Nobody's talking about a new bull market. But let me give you some thoughts about what has happened in the past few weeks to make it so that you could become more positive.
First, we went down so much because the systemic risk in the biggest part of the S&P, the financials, was overwhelming. It is why we "overcorrected" because the market feared -- and shorts pressed their bets -- that the following institutions could go under: Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual (WM) (Cramer's Take), Wachovia (WB) (Cramer's Take) -- yes, Wachovia, because of the miserable buy of what turned out to be a really reckless lender, Golden West -- Lehman Brothers (LEH) (Cramer's Take), Merrill Lynch (MER) (Cramer's Take), Citigroup (C) (Cramer's Take), National City (NCC) (Cramer's Take), Capital One (COF) (Cramer's Take) and even Wells Fargo (WFC) (Cramer's Take). Fannie (FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (FRE) (Cramer's Take), too.
AMD (NYSE:AMD) announced its sixth straight loss. For the first quarter of 2008, the company reported a net loss of $358 million, or 59 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $611 million, or $1.11 a share, for the year-earlier period.
MarketWatch writes "Revenue was $1.5 billion, up from $1.23 billion for the year-ago period. Analysts had expected the chipmaker to report a loss of 48 cents a share on revenue of $1.52 billion, according to FactSet Research."
The company's survival as an independent company remains at stake. The firm said that second quarter results would be down.
AMD still carries long-term debt of over $5 billion and with operating losses it remains difficult to see how the company can attack an amount of that magnitude while still investing aggressively in R&D. Larger rival Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has the balance sheet and cash flow to continue to launch new chips, many of which have features superior to those of AMD products.
AMD may have only two choice now. One would be to sell the company to a more successful chip operation like Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). The other is to auction off its graphics chip operation ATI, and hope that it can get enough money to help take down a large portion of its long-term debt obligations.
Either way, AMD is unlikely to look that same as it does now by the end of the year.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
The markets were able to shake everything off today after techs and financials delivered more hope than economics could deliver in fear. Housing construction gave levels not seen in more than 15-years and the Fed's Beige Book showed that the economy deteriorated further with weak spending, uncertainty, housing and credit woes. Even $115/barrel oil today didn't spook those hoping for a recovery. Even multi-year inflation in China and Europe didn't spook investors. Below are today's unofficial closing levels for US index averages:
Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) shares are trading higher after tech bellwether Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) reported a first quarter profit of $1.44 billion, or 25 cents per share, in line with analysts' estimates. While many investors were expecting weak results, INTC noted in a press release that microprocessor sales were in line with seasonal trends, which could be a good sign for MRVL. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on MRVL.
After hitting a one-year high of $20.04 in July, the stock hit a one-year low of $9.77 in January. MRVL opened this morning at $10.76. So far today the stock has hit a low of $10.53 and a high of $10.95. As of 12:30, MRVL is trading at $10.91, up $0.41 (3.9%). The chart for MRVL looks bullish but deteriorating, while S&P gives the stock a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold rating.
For a bullish hedged play on this stock, I would consider an August bull-put credit spread below the $7.50 range. A bull-put credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of put options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think but still leverage nice returns. For this particular trade, we will make an 8.7% return in just four months as long as MRVL is above $7.50 at August expiration. Marvell would have to fall by more than 30% before we would start to lose money. Learn more about this type of trade here.
U.S. futures are up this morning, buoyed by upbeat news from technology bellwether Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). After the close Tuesday, the world's largest semiconductor company announced higher-than-expected first-quarter revenue of $9.7 billion, up 9% from a year ago. Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said the company saw sales increase in all geographic regions, including the United States and Europe.
This morning, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM) also reported better-than-expected figures. The third largest U.S. bank said Q1 profit fell to $2.37 billion, or 68 cents per share, from $4.79 billion, or $1.34 per share, a year ago. Analysts had expected 64 cents per share.
Stocks closed slightly higher yesterday after a day of mixed economic data and earnings, including the best quarter ever from Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW), better-than expected-earnings from Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), but losses of more than $1 billion from Washington Mutual Inc. (NYSE: WM).The Dow industrials rose 60 points, or 0.49%, the Nasdaq Composite was up 10 points, or 0.45%, and the S&P 500 gained 6 points, or 0.46%.
After the close yesterday, transportation company CSX Corp. (NYSE: CSX) reported soaring first-quarter profit, with a 63% improvement in earnings per share over last year.
Economic data today includes: March consumer price index and housing starts at 8:30 a.m. EST; crude inventories for the week of April 12 are due in at 10:30 a.m.; and the Fed's Beige Book will be released at 2:00 p.m.
In addition to JP Morgan Chase, earnings are due in today from Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo and, after the close, eBay and IBM.
Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) slightly beat consensus: Q1 revenue was slightly ahead ($9.67 billion vs. $9.63 billion consensus). EPS was $0.25, but asset impairment, restructuring charges, and tax rate were higher than expected, so operating EPS was stronger than consensus. June revenue outlook in-line, full-year margin outlook slightly better than expected. Stock up strong in aftermarket.
Key points
Microprocessor and chipset businesses as expected. Microprocessor units lower sequentially, with ASP flat. * NAND revenue flat as significant price declines offset unit growth.
Gross margin: 53.8%, slightly below consensus of 54%.
Tax rate slightly higher than expected: 33.5% vs. 31%, and restructuring and asset-impairment charges $329 million vs. $100 million estimate. Operating income stronger than appears.
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U.S. stock futures were lower early Wednesday as investors, worried about inflation, await data on pending home sales and labor costs. Earnings news in focus this morning comes from tech bellwether Cisco Systems, which gave a cautious outlook, and from Walt Disney, which reported good results.
Shares of 
Readers of this space know that the investment bias is toward large-cap companies with demonstrated business models and a competitive advantage in established markets, preferably with a favorable global trend as a support. With this in mind, Intel is worth an evaluation.
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the good stuff out there -- and there's a lot of it -- will keep us going up.
Here are some highlights from this past week's 
AMD 
Intel Corp.
Comfort Zone Investing: One thriving area of real estate: Apartments
Just how high will U.S. gasoline prices rise?
Nordstrom and Kohl's post smaller-than-expected Q1 profit declines
