Thursday, August 05, 2004

Thursday Watch

Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
ATK/.72
ALKS/-.20
AMLN/-.40
CLX/.83
CPN/-.10
BGG/1.53
ELX/.18
NVDA/.15
PNRA/.21
SLE/.43
TOL/1.14
XMSR/-.88

Splits
None of note.

Economic Data
Initial Jobless Claims for last week estimated at 340K versus 345K the prior week.
Continuing Claims estimated at 2920K versus 2960K prior.

Recommendations
Goldman Sachs reiterated Outperform on DDR and IR. Goldman reiterated Underperform on NFS, UNM and FISV.

Late-Night News
Asian indices are mostly higher on strength in exporters as crude oil prices fell today. Tyson Foods CEO John Tyson told CNBC that the market shouldn't be concerned about last week's departure of former CFO Steve Hankins, Bloomberg reported. Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian Islamic group blamed for terrorist attacks in Indonesia, is struggling with a shortage of money, internal divisions and continuing arrests, the AP reported. Google said it's offering to repurchase 23.2 million of it own shares at a discount to the price it expects for its IPO, Bloomberg said. A senior al-Qaeda member in the U.K., alleged to have been in the final stages of planning an attack on London's Heathrow airport, has been arrested by British police, the London-based Times reported.

Late-Night Trading
Asian Indices are -.25% to +1.0% on average.
S&P 500 indicated -.04%.
NASDAQ 100 indicated +.11%

BOTTOM LINE: I expect U.S. stocks to open modestly higher tomorrow on optimism that oil prices may have peaked. However, unless there is follow-through to today's decline in crude prices, stocks will likely weaken as the day progresses ahead of tomorrow's labor report. The Portfolio is 25% net long heading into tomorrow.

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