U.S. MARKET AVERAGES
Market is caught in a trading range.
Choppy trading in the day was swayed by earnings news from Boeing, Amazon at the opening, and weekly petroleum report at mid-morning and then sell-off in the tech stocks in the late afternoon. Market seemed to not make up its mind.
In the morning good earnings report from Air Products, DuPont, and International Paper was met with cautious holiday sales guidance from Amazon, weaker than expected earnings from Boeing and Cardinal Health drove averages in a tight trading range. Weekly Petroleum report suggested rise in crude oil and gasoline inventory and fall in that of distillate. This prompted crude and heating oil to rally only to lose steam in the afternoon.
Ten-year bond yield rose to 4.59% driving interest sensitive stocks such as home builders, financials and mortgage lenders lower.
Oil companies reported rising profits for the calendar third quarter ending Sept 30th. Conoco Phillips reported 89% rise in profit, Amerada Hess reported 53% jump and Kerr-McGee reported 160% profit jump on continued business. Loss of production at oil companies duew to hurricanes has been outweighed by higher oil an gas prices.
Lone exception in the sector was earnings report from EnCana Corp. The company reported fall in profit of 38% to 30 cents per shares due to $604 million of losses related hedging. Separately CEO of company announced to step down at the end of the year. The stock fell 8%.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Dow component
Boeing (
BA: chart) reported higher third-quarter earnings, but its sales decreased 4% following a strike. The company posted third-quarter net income of $1.01 billion, or $1.26 a share, compared with $456 million, or 56 cents, for the same period a year ago. Boeing’s shares fell 3%.
Car maker
DaimlerChrysler (
DCX: chart) beat its rivals
General Motors (
GM: chart) and
Ford Motor (
F: chart) with its third-quarter results. The company’s stock gained 0.7%.
Amazon’s (
AMZN: chart) quarterly earnings decreased 44% and its fourth-quarter sales estimates were below Wall Street expectations. The company’s stock dropped 11%.
Citigroup upgraded
International Paper (
IP: chart) to “buy” from “hold”. The company is expected to gain today.
ECONOMIC NEWS
Crude oil inventories advanced sharply in the latest week, according to government data released Wednesday, adding to a recent streak of gains. Stocks of gasoline climbed as well, though only slightly.
The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration revealed that crude oil inventories climbed by 4.4 million barrels for the week ended October 21, rising to 316.4 million barrels from the 312.0 million barrels recorded in the previous week. This followed an advance of 5.6 million barrels for the prior week. Oil inventories are 12.3% higher than their levels of the same time last year.
Gasoline inventories posted a week-over-week advance of 200,000 barrels, the government said, adding to the previous week's advance of 2.9 million barrels. Gasoline stocks are now 3.9% below their levels of last year. Inventories of distillate fuel oil fell by 1.6 million barrels in the most recent week.
INTERNATIONAL MARKET NEWS
Asian-Pacific benchmarks ended mixed with the Nikkei rising 0.9% on the back of strong resource-related stocks like JG Corp. and Chyoda Corp. Among the other regional markets, Australia’s All Ordinaries climbed 1.1%, Hong Hong’s Hang Seng closed flat, while South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.2%.
European markets closed higher on resource stocks, upbeat forecast from DaimlerCrysler and Wall Street gains. The German DAX 30 gained 0.6%, the French CAC 40 added 0.4%, and London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.9%.
ENERGY, METALS, CURRENCIES 
