| Subject: Stocks expected to rack up modest gains today |
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Date Posted: 06:58:29 12/16/02 Mon
news @ http://www.worldtradestocks.com
Stocks expected to rack up modest gains today
Reuters News Service
NEW YORK - Stocks are expected to edge higher at today's open as investors wade carefully back into the market after two straight weeks of losses, but worries about potential bad news on the earnings front could keep gains in check.
"We just finished off our second week in a row of declines in the market, said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. "It's just a little bit of a bounce-back."
Persistent concerns about the outlook for corporate profits helped push major market gauges lower last week and those worries may not fade easily this week as Wall Street heads into "confession season," when companies traditionally issue earnings outlooks.
Standard & Poor's stock index futures for March were up 5.80 points at 892.30, while Nasdaq index futures for the same month were up 7 points at 1,017.50.
With no major economic data on the calendar until later this week, investors will be bracing for corporate earnings forecasts.
Traders were eyeing a couple of retailers Monday morning, after Wal-Mart Stores said it still sees December same-store sales up 3 to 5 percent, and Federated Department Stores said it expects holiday sales as stores open at least a year will be at the low end of its forecasted range.
So far during this corporate confession period, about 1,272 companies have offered forecasts for the fourth-quarter, and about 43 percent of those have said they will miss Wall Street analysts' estimates.
Standard & Poor's 500 companies on averages are expected to post a gain of 14.9 percent from the year-ago period, according to earnings tracking firm Thomson First Call.
Earnings from some of Wall Street's biggest banks, such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley , and retailers like Circuit City Group and Best Buy Co., Inc. will be traders' radar screens this week.
Today traders will have their eyes on the Nasdaq Stock Market's new picks for its Nasdaq 100 index, which is considered a key barometer of the technology industry.
The No. 2 stock market dropped 15 companies such as Atmel Corp. and ImClone Systems Inc. and replaced them with companies like Ross Stores, Inc. and PETsMART Inc. .
U.S. stocks sagged on Friday amid nagging worries about global tensions and a foggy corporate profit outlook and a bearish brokerage forecast for the chip industry that dampened Wall Street's appetite for technology stocks.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 104.55 points, or 1.22 percent, at 8,433.85, according to the latest figures. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 12.08 points, or 1.34 percent, to 889.50. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index fell 36.97 points, or 2.64 percent, to 1,362.58.
Wall Street is likely to get no inspiration from Tokyo stocks after the Nikkei average today marked its longest losing streak in 11 years as a sharp rise in the yen and a soft U.S. stock market slammed exporters.
The Nikkei fell 0.76 percent, or 65 points, at 8,450.94 in its first nine-day losing streak since November 1991.
European stocks, however, were making some headway higher, erasing early losses as BNP Paribas , lifted by hopes the bank can be spared a costly bidding war, led the regions' banking sector higher.
The pan-European FTSE Eurotop 300 index rose 1.43 percent.
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