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	10/19/00: The Techs Spark A Wall Street Rally	Text-only
	10/19/00: Are Oil Prices Threatening The Economy?	Text-only
	10/19/00: Road To The White House: Economic Ideas	Text-only
	10/19/00: Prime Mover: Sabeer Bhatia., CEO Of Arzoo	Text-only
	10/19/00: Commentary: What's Best For Social Security	Text-only
	10/19/00: Paul Kangas' Wall Street Wrap Up	Text-only
	10/19/00: NBR Market Stats	Text-only

10/19/00: The Techs Spark A Wall Street Rally SUSIE GHARIB: Wall Street gets its rally, and it's a big one. The NASDAQ exploded by 8 percent today, up almost 250 points, and that's thanks to Microsoft (MSFT) which skyrocketed 10 points in reaction to good earnings news. That surge in Microsoft also pumped up the Dow, up 168 points. What's next for stocks? And is the worst over? Suzanne Pratt gets some answers. SUZANNE PRATT, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: What a difference one day can make on Wall Street. After yesterday's scary sell-off, stocks powered ahead today as investors gobbled up high-tech names at bargain basement prices. All of the major indexes gained solid ground, but activity at the NASDAQ was the most dramatic as the Composite scored its third largest percentage gain ever. Experts attributed the rally to upbeat earnings from Nokia (NOK) today, and Microsoft late yesterday. But few were willing to say the worst is over. TOM GALLAGHER, HEAD OF U.S. EQUITIES, CIBC WORLD MARKETS: I don't know whether yesterday was a bottom or whether today is the start of something. I do know that today there have been some very favorable things that have happened for stocks, and the market is coming off a very, very oversold condition. So I don't think you can read a lot into it. PRATT: Today's move was fairly broad-based, with banks and brokerages leading the pack in addition to technology. But some experts say they would've liked to see evidence of stronger technical factors. For example, advancing issues outnumbered decliners by more than 2-1. An even bigger ratio would've been more bullish. Many Wall Street pros are still nervous about oil prices, the euro, and fourth-quarter earnings. Add to that worries about the effects of tax selling, and for some, you get a muddled outlook for the remainder of this year. But others are encouraged by the health of the economy, and confident that the Federal Reserve will do the right thing. RON HILL, INVESTMENT STRATEGIST, BROWN BROTHERS HARRIMAN: I think the market right now is in the process of trying to believe that a bottom has been reached, that a soft landing scenario is indeed the most likely to come, that the next move by the Fed will be to lower interest rates. And as we get more and more confirmation of that through various economic releases, et cetera, I think you're going to see prices move very nicely higher. PRATT: Today is the 13th anniversary of the crash of 1987, when the Dow lost 23 percent of its value in one day. Even with the market's recent bearish tone, it is worth noting that the Blue Chip Index is over 8,000 points higher today than it was 13 years ago. Suzanne Pratt, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York. Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast. The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2001 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc. 10/19/00: Are Oil Prices Threatening The Economy? SUSIE GHARIB: Crude futures closed just under $33 a barrel today, following some cautious comments on oil from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Mr. Greenspan says that gushing energy prices have the potential to spoil the economic good times in the U.S. Stephanie Woods reports. STEPHANIE WOODS, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told an audience at a conservative think tank that the recent jump in oil prices hasn't effected general inflation, yet. But he warned continued high prices could disrupt the economy. ALAN GREENSPAN, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD: GREENSPAN: Despite some slowing that likely has been related in part to the bite from the so called oil tax on household incomes, the growth of consumer spending has remained firm. But policy makers will need to be on the alert for oil driven, indeed, energy driven risks to our expansion. WOODS: Greenspan cited political difficulties in the Middle East and low inventories from when OPEC cut production in 1998 and '99 as reasons for the surge in prices. OPEC has since boosted production to record levels, but Greenspan says worried distributors and consumers may be limiting the impact of those increases. GREENSPAN: In the short run, the price of oil, as that of all commodities, inevitably is influenced importantly by inventory levels, especially when stocks become critically short. WOODS: Analysts expect inventories to increase and prices to stabilize once the winter home heating oil season passes. But oil analyst James Plack says predicting world inventory levels is an inexact science. JAMES PLACKE, DIRECTOR, CAMBRIDGE ENERGY RESEARCH: Even in the United States or in Western Europe, we don't know what individuals have bought and what they have stored in their own individual fuel storage tanks. WOODS: As usual, Mr. Greenspan did not say what interest rate policy will be in the future. Most economists expect the Fed to leave rates unchanged when it meets next in November and the Chairman's remarks on oil haven't changed that view. Stephanie Woods, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington. Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast. The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2001 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc. 10/19/00: Road To The White House: Economic Ideas PAUL KANGAS: The Fed chairman also raised doubts about whether the political process will allow federal budget surpluses to continue to grow. And the budget surplus was front and center in the presidential campaign today, as Vice President Gore stepped up his attacks on the Bush economic plan. In tonight's road to the white house, Darren Gersh looks at the campaign's economic rhetoric. DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The vice president said there was a big difference on the economy in this election. He would balance the budget every year, while charging Governor Bush's economic plan would rack up massive deficits, pushing interest rates higher. AL GORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That would be the wrong message to send to our markets. While we haven't repealed the business cycle, we have learned a hard lesson when it comes to fiscal discipline. Sound fiscal policy sends a signal of reassurance to our markets. GERSH: Democrats also launched a major offensive against the Governor's plan to use $1 trillion of the Social Security surplus for private accounts. Democrats said they were turning the electricity on to the third rail in American politics. But Bush had another view. GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's irresponsible for the Chairman of the Democrat Party and for Vice President Gore to stoke the fears of seniors while ignoring the hopes of younger workers. GERSH: The Governor says there is enough money in the Social Security surplus to finance personal accounts and he calls those accounts a new deal for a rising generation of American workers. BUSH: When this money is accumulated, it will be more than a government program, it will be your property. GERSH: But the Vice President accused Bush of double counting, promising money to younger workers that had already been promised to seniors. GORE: Who gets left out in the cold and where does the trillion dollars come from in the first place? The money's nowhere in his budget. GERSH: The Vice President said today prosperity is on the ballot. The question now, which candidate do the voters think can best keep the good economic times going. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington. Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast. The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2001 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc. 10/19/00: Prime Mover: Sabeer Bhatia., CEO Of Arzoo SUSIE GHARIB: The brains behind the nation's largest e-mail provider, Hotmail, are at it again, this time with a new online venture called Arzoo . Hotmail's former President and CEO Is the Founder, President and CEO Of Arzoo, Sabeer Bhatia. Arzoo is an Indian word meaning heart's desire. It uses a network of technical experts who provide real time engineering and troubleshoot computer problems. The privately held company was formed last spring and has annual sales of more than $3 million. In tonight's prime movers segment, Donald van de Mark of Myprimetime.com asks Bhatia to explain the services of his company. SABEER BHATIA, PRESIDENT & CEO, ARZOO: You know, there are about 600,000 corporations in the world today that use some form of technology, some form of hardware and software. And to enable their information technology workers to become more productive, this is a resource that we provide to corporations. DONALD VAN DE MARK, MYPRIMETIME.COM: You had a business model that was focused on consumers and yet you moved away from that. Why? BHATIA: Well, the simple answer to that is that there was no money to be made. Look at what is happening in the business to consumer e-commerce space. All the stocks of e-commerce companies are in the single digits, barring Amazon (AMZN), excepting Amazon. So I think the problem is that people spent way too much money in acquiring customers and consumers and they realized very quickly that the profit margins were very small. It's like any other retailing business and the volumes did not quite make up for one, the low profit margins and the high cost of also doing business. VAN DE MARK: How did you explain to a staff that was working very hard, sleeping on mattresses, all the traits of a classic startup, that your original idea wouldn't work and now your second idea would? BHATIA: It was hard. It was so hard that people, a lot of people left. A lot of people were disillusioned. But I think I had to tell them the truth and the truth was that the original business idea that we had started a company with would not work. VAN DE MARK: Let's talk about Hotmail. You built the company in a little more than two years. You sold it to Microsoft for $400 million. You, in effect, created one of the fastest growing companies in terms of user bases in the world. Tell us about that. BHATIA: I think it was a phenomenal time. I think the opportunity was just right and the Internet was ready for it and I think we really struck gold. I think we, you know, found something that the whole world needed and we rode the wave of the growth of the Internet and at that time the entire size of the Internet was about 20, 30 million people and today it is 10 times that. VAN DE MARK: Do you believe that the opportunities today are as big as they were four and five years ago, or is the window of opportunity closing? BHATIA: I think it is closing in a big way. The opportunities now are slightly of, different in nature. There still are opportunities, but I don't think they are in the dot.com space anymore. I think they are more in the space where you can leverage the Internet to make normal business processes more efficient. I think there is tremendous opportunity still in the infrastructure business because even though there are about 300 million people who are using the Internet today, the room for growth is tremendous. I mean, they still have like two billion people who would want to be on the Internet. But I think the opportunities are in slightly different areas than there were, you know, four years ago. Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast. The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2001 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc. 10/19/00: Commentary: What's Best For Social Security SUSIE GHARIB: Tonight's commentator says converting Social Security to a private investment plan could undermine the economy. Here's Alice Rivlin, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank. ALICE RIVLIN, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: The Social Security debate sounds simple. Vice President Gore wants to protect Social Security by putting more money in it, using part of the growing surpluses in the rest of the budget to make sure the balances in Social Security are big enough to pay benefits to the growing numbers of retirees. He also wants incentives for people to save outside of Social Security. Governor Bush, by contrast, wants to allow people to take part of what they already pay into Social Security and put it into separate accounts that they can invest themselves. He thinks that even if people invest those funds conservatively, they'll get a higher return than they'd get in Social Security. That sounds simple, but watch out. Social Security wasn't set up like a private pension plan that has to have enough money in it to pay all future claims even if the company goes bankrupt. Social Security was set up to collect money from current workers and pay most of those monies out to current retirees. If Governor Bush wants to channel part of that incoming money into private accounts, he has to tell us where he is going to get the money to pay full benefits to those who are already retired now or will retire before their private accounts are worth much. That's more than a trillion dollar black hole in what sounds like such a simple plan. I'm Alice Rivlin. Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast. The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2001 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc. 10/19/00: Paul Kangas' Wall Street Wrap Up PAUL KANGAS: The stock market shot out of the starting gate like a rocket this morning, propelled by carryover buying from yesterday's impressive late recovery, along with a host of better-than-expected earnings reports from the likes of Microsoft late yesterday, followed by Nokia early today. At 10:00 a.m., the Dow Industrial Average wiped out yesterday's 114-point closing loss with a 117-point gain, while the NASDAQ Index soared 158 points. The market took just a short late-morning breather, mostly in the blue chips, and then came on strong again with the help of some frantic short covering purchases by scared bears. A firm bond market also gave stocks a bit of a boost. Midway through the noon hour, the Dow was still up 109 points; the NASDAQ Index posted a 203 1/2-point gain. Just when many investors were expecting the rally to fizzle in mid-afternoon, it gathered renewed upward momentum, with the tech sector leading the way. The Dow Industrial Average forged on to close up 167.96 points, or 1.7 percent, at 10,142.98; that's its best level of the day. The NASDAQ Composite turned in a glowing performance, rising 247.04 points, that's 7.8 percent and now stands at 3418.60. In its 252-point trading range, the Composite Index settled only five points below its best level; up 247 points from its worst level of the session. Impressive indeed. Volume down a bit on the big board but still very active at 1.3 billion shares. And just about three times as much up volume as down volume. The Dow Transport Index up over 91 points. Oil fell a little bit and the airlines did very well. Utilities edging up only .43. And the Closing Tick still rather bullish at +421. Standard & Poor's 500 up 46.63. A little over 27-point gain in the 100. MidCap 400 up just over 16 1/4 points. The Bridge Futures Price Index fell 1.79. New York Stock Exchange Composite up exactly 13 1/2 points. Nearly a 9 3/4-point gain in the Value Line. Russell2000 Small Cap up just over 15 points. And the broadly-based Wilshire 5000 had a very good day, up 448 2/3 points. After the market closed, the Federal Reserve reported in the week ending October 9, the M-2 money supply fell $4.9 billion. The bond market managed to edge a bit today without the benefit of safe-haven buying from any sell-off in stocks, but it did get some of that support from continuing violence in the MidEast. Another plus was an unexpected decline in the August U.S. trade deficit. Also helping was news from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank that manufacturing activity in its region fell for the first time in two years during October. As a result, tax-free and corporates rose 1/8-point on average. And the Treasury market closed mostly higher. Not the 5-year notes, which fell 1/32. But the 10-year notes up 4/32, with the yield at 5.66 percent. 30-year bond up 9/32. And the Lehman Brothers Long-Term Treasury Bond Index rose just over 3 points. Wall Street's bulls kind of shaved some of those profits from the bears that they've been enjoying in the last few weeks, nearly 168 point gain in the Dow and the broader market really impressive, about 1,043 more stocks on the up side than on the down side. But only 28 new yearly highs, 93 new lows. Nokia (NOK) topped the active list on 33.7 million shares, up $8.13. It was as high as $39.19 after reporting third quarter earnings much better than expected, up 40 percent over last year on a 59 percent jump in sales. America Online (AOL) down $1.47 despite yesterday's post-market earnings of $0.14 versus $0.07 the year before. Texas Instruments (TXN) up $8.88. After the close yesterday, $0.33 third quarter, in line and up nicely from last year. Even though the company warned fourth quarter revenues will be flat, First Boston today still repeated a "buy" and that really helped the stock. AT & T (T) moving up $1.44. Motorola (MOT) gained $2.25, fifth in big board volume. Compaq Computer (CPQ) a $2.50 gain there. Lucent Technologies (LU) up nearly $2.50. IBM (IBM) rose only $0.94 after tumbling $17.50 yesterday, not much of a comeback there. Chase Manhattan (CMB) up $2.06. And then Nortel Networks (NT) gained $5.81, 10th in big board volume. AMR (AMR), parent of American Airlines, up $1.81. That company yesterday had nicely higher third quarter earnings, $1.96. That was $0.18 above the Street estimate. Baxter International (BAX) tumbling $10.38. Third quarter earnings were higher, $0.77 versus $0.67. But the company cut its own 2001 earnings estimate growth from the mid-teens to the low double digits. Celestica (CLS) up $7.56. Third quarter earnings more than double last year, $0.39, up from $0.18. First Boston increased earnings estimates. Honeywell International (HON) closed up $2 a share but in after hours trading was as high as $45 a share and then after the close United Technologies (UTX) confirmed rumors making the rounds today that it is in talks about a business combination with Honeywell. McDonald's (MCD) down $0.19. After the close, the company reported third quarter results $0.41 a share, up from $0.39 a year ago, in line with expectations. Praxair (PX) tumbled $3.75. Third quarter earnings higher, $0.76 versus $0.69 last year, but Praxair says fourth quarter earnings will be about the same as the third quarter, no progress. LSI Logic (LSI) up $5.31, boosted by that big rally in the semiconductor sector today, and third quarter earnings for LSI due next Tuesday. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) up $3.94. Third quarter earnings, $0.28, way up from $0.10 last year. Univision Communications (UVN) up $6.69, apparent optimism about third quarter earnings due out next Monday. The Street's looking for $0.12 a share. International Rectifier (IRF) had a big day, up $7.19. Standard & Poor's upgraded the company's corporate credit standing and after the close International Rectifier reported fourth quarter earnings $0.63, up from $0.10 a year ago and $0.04 above the Street estimate. 99 Cents Only Stores (NDN) tumbling $14.44. I hope this doesn't keep up or the stock price will be the same as the name of the company. Third quarter earnings lower than expected at $0.02, down from $0.24 a year ago. The Street was looking for $0.29. Chesapeake (CSK) down $3.63. Third quarter earnings sharply lower, $0.15 versus $0.68 last year. Merrill Lynch downgraded "buy" to "neutral." NASDAQ, up 247.04, the third largest point gain and the third largest one day percentage gain. Volume down a bit from yesterday, but still impressive, 2,800 stocks up, only 1,124 down. Microsoft (MSFT) leading the pack with a $10.13 gain. Cisco (CSCO) up $6. Sun Microsystems (SUNW) gained $7.38. Ariba (ARBA) up $3.42. Intel (INTC) up $3.75. Nothing but plus signs on that board. Juniper Networks (JNPR) up $18.70. SDL (SDLI) rising $10.25. JDS Uniphase (JDSU) up $2.94. Extreme Networks (EXTR) down $12.31. Yesterday the company had fourth quarter earnings of $0.08. $0.08 was $0.02 above the Street estimate, the stock still down. Broadcom (BRCM) up $24.75. Aware (AWRE) up $14.25. This is a leader in DSL technology. The company in with better than expected third quarter results, $0.15, up from $0.06 last year. And Netro (NTRO) tumbling $24.