After Market – Dress Barn earnings surprise but Pixar report lower earnings.
Dress Barn report revenue jump of 55% and earnings of $14.1 million or 42 cents vs. 5 cents a year ago. Excluding stock options and other conversions related to debt earnings would have been 47 cents beating the estimates of 40 cents by analysts. Pixar Animation reported Q4 profit of 25 cents vs. 55 cents a year ago on flat revenue. Disney has agreed to acquire Pixar for $7.4 billion.


4:15PM-Market recovered barely despite 10-year yield closed at 4.742%.

Dow-10,980.69 + 22.10 Nasdaq- 2268.38 - (17.65) S&P- 1,275.88 – (2.38)

Markets gyrated with the bond market yield swings. Markets managed to make a small comeback in the last twenty minutes of trading and tech stocks heavy Nasdaq recovered for the day’s worst level of 1% decline. Brokerage stocks, home builders, railroads, miners and select tech stocks traded lower. In a day of negative bias on trading most tech stocks declined for the most part of the trading session. Citigroup decision to sell 8 million of Legg Mason shares received in a transaction for asset management unit led brokerage stocks to decline. Emerging markets ADRs trading in New York declined as markets in Brazil, Mexico, Korea, Argentina and Russia declined.

Crude oil, gold, copper closed lower but natural gas closed higher. Gold lost $2.30 per ounce to close at $554.50 and silver gained 8 cents to close above $10 to $10.107 but copper lost 1.95 cents to close at $2.1770. Natural gas gained 13 cents to close at $6.678 mBTU and crude oil lost 83 cents to close at $61.58 after trading as low as $61.10.


3:30PM-Markets in Europe and Americas decline on mining and tech stocks.
Markets in Europe and South Africa closed lower led by South Africa index loss of 3.84% and Norway index loss of 0.96%. U.K. and Switzerland lost more than 0.5%. Markets in Brazil led decliners in South America with a decline of 2.82% followed by a decline of 2.3% in Mexico and 2.2% in Argentina. Petrobras and CVRD lost 4% and 4.5% respectively in Brazil. American Movil and Cemex lost 4.2% and 4.1% respectively. Rising interest rates were blamed for the steepest decline in indexes in the last ten months across the region.

Telecom Italia SpA reported fourth quarter profit of euro 591 million from euro 138 million a year ago on revenue rise of 6.1% to euro 7.96 billion. The telecom company acquired 44% of the wireless unit it did not own in the last year. The company proposed buyback of shares worth one billion euros and dividend rise to 0.14 euro and 0.151 savings shares. For the full year revenue rose 5.8% and earnings rose 77%.


3:00PM-Earnings Roundup including Kroger and Qualcomm.
Kroger (KR: chart) reported same store sales rise of 6.2% and earnings of 39 cents vs. loss of 89 cents in the fourth quarter a year ago. The year ago earnings included goodwill impairment charge of $1.17 per share. The company earnings beat the estimate of 36 cents and initiated cash dividend of 6.5 cents. Qualcomm (QCOM: chart), mobile chipset manufacturer reported rising chip unit and dollar sales and revised earnings guidance. The company revised earnings for the second-quarter to 40 cents and 41 cents from 35 cents and 37 cents on revenue rise to $1.75 billion to $1.82 billion from $1.63 billion to $1.73 billion. It revised the unit chip guidance to 47 million to 48 million from 44 million to 46 million.


2:00PM- Markets remain under pressure on 10-year bond rising to 4.76%.
Broader averages and tech stocks remained in the negative territory in the early afternoon in rising rates, oil declining by $1 and telecom stocks sell-off. AutoNation (AN: chart) is up 7% on the news that the company plans to buyback $50 million shares at $23 and $323.5 million of its 9% secured debt using $900 million unsecured debt. Public Storage confirmed the acquisition of Shurgard Storage for $5 billion, now the largest self-storage company with the market cap of $18 billion.

Penn National Gaming (PENN: chart) rallied 11% on an upgrade from J.P. Morgan to overweight from neutral. The broker cited that recent ruling from Illinois Gaming Board to let the company run the riverboat casino and extend a dead-line to sell another casino.


12:30AM-European markets close in the negative.
European stocks closed lower, reflecting mixed U.S. averages and sharp losses in resource stocks including BHP Billiton, down 3.1% and Rio Tinto, down 2.2%. Automaker Volkswagen AG which bucked the lower trend in early trading finished down 0.6%. The company expects profit rise in 2006 on 15% sales growth in the first two months of the year. The German DAX 30 lost 0.3%, the French CAC 40 dropped 0.4%, and London FTSE 100 slipped 0.6%.

Crude oil prices declined ahead of OPEC meeting. Light sweet crude April delivery fell 16 cents to $62.25 a barrel on the Nymex. Gasoline lost 1 cent to $1.6450, while heating oil was marginally down to $1.7447. Natural gas rose 6 cents to $6.608 per 1,000 cubic feet. London Brent lost 7 cents to $62.27. European gold prices extended losses. In London gold fell to $549.80 bid per troy ounce, down from $565.10. In Zurich the precious metal traded at $565. In Hong Kong gold dropped $13.20 to $554.60. Silver closed at $9.98 per troy ounce, down from $10.20. The U.S. dollar advanced against other major currencies. The euro traded at $1.1880, down from $1.2017. The dollar bought 117.65 yen, up from 117.54. The British pound was quoted at $1.7346, down from $1.7491.


11:30AM-Large caps supported the Dow Jones Industrial index.
The Dow Jones sustained earlier gains, trying to reach the session highs. The Dow rose 29 points, boosted by General Motors (GM: chart) which was the leading gainer with an advance of 1.75, as well as Honeywell International (HON: chart), up 1.5% and Procter & Gamble (PG: chart), up about 1.2%. General Motors released details of its revised pension plan. Employees hired after Jan 1, 2001 will be now on defined contribution plan, this move will help company to lower its pension liability in 2006 by $1.6 billion and pension cost in 2007 by $420 million. Analysts said the move is too little to have impact on the future cash flows.

The Nasdaq moved down around 12 points. Only about a third of the Dow 30 moved to the downside in the morning. The sharpest drop came from AT&T (T: chart), which was down 1.7% on a deal to acquire BellSouth. Alcoa was another notable decliner, down about 1.6%.