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CNBC ON DIGG

A Broad Advance

Published: Thursday, 25 Jun 2009 | 3:55 PM ET

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By: Bob Pisani
Reporter

Stocks briefly lost a little bit of steam as Fitch downgraded the state of California's long-term general obligation bond rating to "A-" from "A" and placed the bonds on Rating Watch negative "based on the magnitude of the state's financial and institutional challenges and persistent economic and revenue weakening."

Earlier, a broad advance midday, with strength in retail, healthcare, industrials, and energy, with gains due to:

1) Bernanke aggressively defending his record and even going on the offensive at some point, insisting that his actions prevented the global economy from going into an even steeper decline;

2) a strong 7-year Treasury auction, joining the strong 2- and 5-year auctions this week;

3) consolidation in the retail space with the Tween Brands [TWB Loading... () ] - Dress Barn [DBRN Loading... () ] deal, and talk of more cost-saving deals to come;

3) Hertz comments about car rentals stabilizing. Hertz [HTZ Loading... () ] up 13 percent, Thrifty [DTG Loading... () ] up 23 percent, Avis [CAR Loading... () ] up 17 percent. Hertz says U.S. and European demand is stabilizing and the outlook for summer reservations has improved. Full year guidance is well ahead of Street estimates, and seems to be based on an actual improvement in demand, not just cost savings or higher prices.

In an interview on CNBC, Hertz CEO Mark Frissora said he was "scrambling to buy as many cars" as he could to anticipate increased demand.

Perhaps just as important was the fact that Hertz gave guidance at all; they had stopped providing guidance when things started going south some time ago.

Hertz is one of the first companies to resume guidance; is this the start of a trend? Right now, judging by what is happening at airlines and other transportation companies, they seem to be a bit of an outlier. For example, we have heard nothing about improvement in demand from the hotel industry.

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