Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Thursday Watch

Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
BCSI/.23
CHS/.39
DITC/.20
DG/.20
QSII/.40
SHFL/.19

Splits
ANN 3-for-2

Economic Data
Preliminary Gross Domestic Product for 1Q estimated at 4.5% versus 4.2% prior.
Preliminary Personal Consumption for 1Q estimated at 3.9% versus 3.8% prior.
Preliminary GDP Price Deflator for 1Q estimated at 2.5% versus 2.5% prior.
Initial Jobless Claims for last week estimated at 335K versus 345K prior week.
Continuing Claims estimated at 2925K versus 2943K prior.
Help Wanted Index for April estimated at 41 versus 39 in March.

Recommendations
Goldman Sachs reiterated Outperform on CYT, TYC, HD and BBY. Goldman reiterated Outperform on Lodging sector. Goldman reiterated Underperform on PSSI.

Late-Night News
Asian indices are mostly on strength in Hong Kong and Korea. Airbus SAS forecasts the number of daily flight and aircraft in Asia-Pacific will double in the next two decades, propelling the region past the U.S. as the world's busiest, the Australian newspaper reported. Disney may abandon the sale of its European retail stores, worth $181.24 million, after talks with 2 bidders collapsed, the London-based Times said. Greece will shoot down any aircraft trying to target the Olympic Games being held in Athens in August, the BBC said. al-Sadr offered to withdraw his forces from Najaf and hand the holy city over to Iraqi police, the AP reported. Nokia may get a $250 million order from Bharti Tele-Ventures to operate and maintain some cellular phone networks, the Economic Times reported. Shanghai, China's largest city, is replacing hundreds of thousands of iron manhole covers with concrete and plastic ones after a 57% rise in scrap steel prices encouraged thieves to steal about 1,800 of the lids, Bloomberg reported.

Late-Night Trading
Asian Indices -.25% to +2.0% on average.
S&P 500 indicated -.04%.
NASDAQ indicated -.03%.

BOTTOM LINE: I expect U.S. stocks to open lower after stronger-than-expected GDP and Price Deflator reports send interest rates higher. However, stocks should firm up later in the day on weakening oil prices and short-covering. I do not expect another significant rally until after the holiday weekend. The Portfolio is 125% net long heading into tomorrow.

No comments: