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MarketView
Events defining the day's trading activity on Wall Street
Lauren Rudd
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Summary
The equity markets were higher on Wednesday as
stronger-than-expected economic data helped lift energy stocks,
overshadowing concerns a European Union summit will not yield tangible
progress in easing the debt crisis. The energy sector could lay claim to the greatest
gains among the 10 major S&P 500 groups, rising 1.9 percent as oil
prices settled higher at $80.21 per barrel. Cabot Oil & Gas had a gain
of 9 percent to end the day at
$41.24 and was the largest advancer on the S&P 500. Worries about Europe have fed dramatic selloffs in
stocks lately, but the declines have been tempered by enough short-term
buying to keep the market confined to a range. Sentiment was helped by
better-than-expected sales of long-lasting manufactured goods in May,
although excluding transportation and defense items, orders were down. In other data, signed contracts for home purchases
hit a seven-month high. Shares of Lennar, the third-largest U.S.
homebuilder, rose 4.8 percent to close at $28.70 after the company
reported a rise in new orders for the fifth straight quarter. Arena Pharmaceuticals ended the day up 28.7 percent
to $11.39 on news that the FDA approved the pharmaceutical company’s
pill to treat obesity, the first weight-loss drug in 13 years. Shares of
Vivus and Orexigen Therapeutics were higher following the FDA approval
of Arena's obesity drug. The companies are also hoping to bring their
medicines to market. Vivus ended the day up 7.4 percent to $28.33 and
Orexigen Therapeutics chalked up a gain of 20.3 percent to close at
$4.92. But uncertainty remained ahead of the euro zone
leaders' summit, which begins on Thursday. Few anticipate anything
concrete to emerge from the two-day meeting after German Chancellor
Angela Merkel said debt sharing, an idea backed by France, Italy and
Spain, would not happen in her lifetime. Healthcare stocks were in focus heading into
Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court decision on President Barack Obama's 2010
healthcare law. Some investors have their attention on stocks less
likely to be affected by the ruling, such as large pharmaceuticals. Many
investors expect the requirement that uninsured Americans purchase
health insurance to be overturned. The market's rise came on light volume of 5.75
billion shares that changed hands on the three major equity exchanges.
The daily average year-to-date is 6.84 billion shares. Some of Wall Street's top analysts published their
research on Facebook, and most are cautiously optimistic. Facebook
shares fell 2.6 percent to $32.32 after gaining more than 20 percent in
the prior two weeks.
Disagreement on More Fed Easing
There was serious disagreement with the Federal
Reserve on whether Fed needs to be more aggressive in spurring economic
growth, indicating another round of easing is far from certain. Chicago
Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans, one of the Fed's strongest
advocates for further monetary policy easing, said Wednesday he is
flummoxed by the Fed's timidity in the face of high unemployment and low
inflation. However, his colleague, Atlanta Fed leader Dennis
Lockhart, said the Fed would only need to act further if the economy
took a turn for the worse or if Europe's simmering debt crisis boils
over. "I don't think the conditions have developed that
require us to bring out bigger guns quite yet," Lockhart said in an
interview with Nightly Business Report. Lockhart, who unlike Evans wields a vote this year
on the Fed's policy-setting panel, said policymakers' most recent
action, extending a program swapping shorter-term bonds it owns for
longer-term ones to push down longer-term interest rates, serves to
maintain the right level of help for the weak recovery. An escalation of problems in Europe, a sudden
slowing of U.S. economic growth, a spike in job layoffs, or the risk of
a deflationary spiral might be triggers for more Fed action that could
include another round of bond buying, Lockhart said. "If the circumstances call for it, more stimulus
could be provided," he said. The Atlanta Fed president's stance is as at the
mid-point of Fed views that range from reluctance to further expand the
central bank's underpinning of the modest recovery to those such as
Evans who think more aggressive steps are urgently needed. At its policy-setting meeting last week, Fed
officials sharply slashed their gross domestic product forecasts for
2012 and 2013 and marked down the outlook for inflation. Those changes
to the Fed's summary of economic projections, suggest progress on its
twin goals of full employment and stable prices is slowing if not
stalled. Instead of reacting with a new round of bond buying
to boost jobs, the Fed took the much more modest step of adding six
months to an existing program, known as Operation Twist, which is aimed
at lowering long-term interest rates. "I think if you look at our projections ... it's
hard to understand why we wouldn't be willing to do more because the
inflation outlook is lower than our objective," Evans told a small group
of reporters at the Chicago Fed headquarters. With unemployment at the "completely unacceptable"
level of 8.2 percent and inflation set to fall, the Fed should be
ramping up even more its already significant level of accommodation,
Evans said. Extending Operation Twist is better than nothing, he said,
but is likely to reduce 10-year Treasury yields by only about a tenth of
a percent. Although the Fed said in January it will take a
"balanced approach" to meeting its goals, Evans suggested Wednesday the
central bank should allow a bit more inflation in the pursuit of higher
employment. "I don't think we've clarified what we mean by
‘balanced approach' at all," said Evans, who grimaced at times as he
described an economy close to stall speed and faced with risks from
Europe's crisis and elsewhere. "I think that a balanced approach means I'd be
willing to undertake accommodative policies at some risk of increased
inflation - it's below our target - at some risk of increasing it above
that by some amount," he said. "How much? How much? That's a fair
question. We are not offering very much in delineating that." The Fed last week kept its guidance that rates will
stay low until at least late 2014, tying policy to the calendar in a
fashion that virtually no Fed policymaker appears to support
wholeheartedly. Evans, for his part, said the Fed needs to provide
more clarity around that guidance, and reiterated his view the central
bank should promise to keep rates low until unemployment falls to 7
percent, or inflation threatens to rise above 3 percent. It should also be clearer about how far inflation
would need to deviate from the Fed's 2 percent inflation target, either
above or below, before setting off alarm bells, he said. Yet Evans suggested the Fed's communications
sub-committee, of which he is a member, is not close to providing
additional refinements to its current guidance. "We are trying to understand the implications of
what we've put in place, and whether or not there are simple
enhancements, or alternative enhancements, which could improve things,"
he said. Before committing to further quantitative easing,
the Fed last week appeared to want to give European policymakers a
chance to stabilize the crisis-stricken euro zone, warning of
"significant downside risks to the economic outlook," including Europe's
sovereign debt crisis. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke also said he was watching
to see if jobs data might improve before unleashing any new round of
bond purchases.
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MarketView for June 27
MarketView for Wednesday, June 27