Daily Market Summary 2/9/07

[Portfolio Crafter]

End of Day Market Summary Friday, February 9, 2007
by Portfolio Crafter
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Stocks closed lower even as late gains in technology and energy contained losses for the broad market, after HSBC Holdings, the world's third largest bank, warned that bad debts were on the rise in the U.S. The downtrend was possibly a reaction to the negative news coming out HSBC. Investors mulled January retail sales, higher oil prices and revived worries about the impact of the slowdown in the housing market.

Today, the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 29.24 or 0.23% to 12,637.63, the broader S&P 500 closed down 1.71 or 0.12% to 1,448.31, and the Nasdaq closed down 1.83 or 0.07% to 2,488.67.

Market breadth was negative. On the New York Stock Exchange, decliners topped advancers by a slim margin of 17 to 15 on volume of 1.6 billion shares. On the Nasdaq, losers beat winners by a narrow margin of 15 to 14 on volume of 2.0 billion shares.

The report on January retail sales, ran from weak to strong, suggesting a decent but not remarkable post-Christmas period for the chain stores. Same-store receipts at 55 of the nation's top chain-store retailers climbed 3.9%, against the 3.1% forecast. Overall, it was certainly a nice finish to the fiscal year -- and a nice start to the calendar year.

Concerns about the impact from the collapse in the housing market were revived. Toll Brothers warned about its quarterly revenue, and HSBC Bank and New Century Financial warned about problems resulting from defaults on home loans.

Stock of Costco Wholesale closed down $0.51 to $56.62, after posting smaller than expected rise of 2% in same-stores sales. Stock of GAP closed up $0.50 to $19.75, after posting flat same-store sales versus a decline a year ago.

Stock of Toll Brothers closed down $1.04 to $33.39, after warning of first-quarter homebuilding revenue and orders that will fall sharply and that it will take substantial write-downs related to land it optioned for development but now is walking away from because of the housing slump.

Shares of HSBC closed down $2.44 to $89.78, after warning that its bad-debt charge for last year would be higher than expected. This is a result of problems with its U.S. mortgage lending. It expects that bad debt provisions would be 20% higher than analysts had forecast for 2006.

Shares of Walt Disney closed down $0.19 to $35.29, after reporting quarterly sales and earnings that rose from a year ago and topped estimates. Sales climbed 10% to $9.7 billion, ahead of the expected $9.5 billion, and net profit more than doubled to $1.7 billion.

Shares of EMC closed up $0.90 to $14.50, after the computer data storage company said it will spin off roughly 10% of VMware, its computing virtualization unit.

U.S. light crude oil for March delivery rose $2 to settle at $59.71 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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