There was a broad rally today....four to one advancing to declining stocks, but late-day comments from Federal Express, which lowered its 2009 earnings guidance, as well as negative comments from Con-Way in the trucking space, and Texas Instruments, National Semi, and Altera in the techs are weighing on futures after the close.
Specifically:
1) FedEx lowered guidance for the current (second) quarter, and guided lower for the full year (to $3.50-4.75 vs. prior $4.75-5.25). What would their guidance have been had oil been at $100 a barrel?
2) Trucker Con-Way guided full year earnings lower as well, to $2.20-$2.35 vs. $2.60-$2.80. They have reduced their workforce by 8 percent.
3) Texas Instruments guided revenue for the current quarter lower ($2.30-$2.50 billion vs. prior $2.83 to $3.07 billion)
4) National Semi said revenue would be down 30 percent in the following quarter (hurt by lower handset demand)
5) Chip maker Altera also said sales would be down 9 to 12 percent compared to the current quarter; they are seeing slower than expected sales across all market segments--they sell to the computing, telecom, industrial and automotive industries
On the markets, the big question today was, how big will the infrastructure part of the stimulus package be? President-elect Obama made a point of saying it would be big, but how big? Some analysts said it could be as big as $130 billion.
That stimulated buying in engineering and construction stocks like Fluor. These stocks have been rallying for a couple weeks. More importantly, commodity stocks and oil service stocks--which have not rallied--staged a terrific move up today, with many up double digits.
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