| EBay wavers after 4Q report
Shares of online auctioneer eBay Inc. rose Wednesday ahead of its fourth-quarter report, as a Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst called the stock his "best short-term idea" -- but retreated in after-hours trading after the report's release. EBay shares rose $1.81, 6.7 percent, to close at $28.94 in advance of the earnings report and before Chief Executive Meg Whitman announced she would soon step down. In extended trading, the stock initially rose but then retreated to $27.50. The stock hit a 52-week low of $26.02 on Tuesday, as fears of a recession hurt stocks around the globe, despite a decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut the federal funds rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3.5 percent. In a client note Wednesday, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt said that though eBay is losing e-commerce market share, its competitive position is stabilizing in core areas including liquidation inventory, collectibles and difficult-to-find items, he said.
Akamai shares rise on analyst's report
Shares of Akamai Technologies Inc. rose today after a Pacific Crest analyst said Akamai is delivering content for Apple Inc.'s new online movie rental service. Shares of Cambridge-based Akamai, which provides services and technologies for distribution and storage of digital media, added $1.05, or 4.1 percent, to $26.93 in midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. In the past year, the stock has traded between $25.13 and $59.69. In a client note, Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley said that Akamai had refuted rumors that it lost business from Apple, but worries continued that the company might not provide delivery for future iTunes services. But an analysis of network traffic data gleaned from renting a movie from Apple's new iTunes movie rental service showed Akamai is in fact delivering content for it, he said.
From East to West, panic grips the world’s investors
After the carnage on global markets on Black Monday, Japan and Australia were the first powerhouse economies to see the dawn of Tuesday morning. While American markets had taken Monday off for Martin Luther King Day, the panic gripping global markets had continued to wreak havoc.
Yesterday, as US traders slept, the bloody trading began anew on the other side of the world. By midnight GMT Australia’s markets had been open an hour. Investors’ rush for the door crashed the website of the country’s leading online share broker, CommSec, as the market started an immediate downward spiral. The stock market’s fall of nearly 3 per cent on Monday looked timid as it raced towards its biggest one-day slide in 20 years. Hans Kunnen, the head of investment markets research for Colonial First State, said: "Judging by the mood of the market today, the bears are certainly winning."
However, what the Asian markets did not know, as they started their downward spiral, was that in America the members of the Federal Reserve were calling each other.
London Stock Exchange (LSE) system failure stops trading
Technical problems with the London Stock Exchange's Infolect data delivery system interrupted trading yesterday for 40 minutes, just before the market closed. The timing was highly unfortunate, as it coincided with US stock markets having one of their worst days of the year. From the Times Online: Furious traders were left twiddling their thumbs for the last 40 minutes of trading yesterday after the London Stock Exchange's IT system collapsed. The LSE emphasized that the trading system itself was not down but only the Infolect system that disseminates data to the market. However, the effect was that traders would have to wait until this morning to ask clients whether they want to settle trades, since stock prices were uncertain. And from another Times Online article: The LSE promised to recalculate the FTSE indices once the closing auction ended but last night it was unclear whether this had been done.
TD Ameritrade 1Q profit up 65 percent
OMAHA, Neb. - A surge in stock trading last fall helped online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. generate a 65 percent increase in its quarterly net income. The Omaha-based company said Thursday that asset-based revenue also continued to grow and accounted for more than half of its revenue in the October-December period. But some analysts questioned whether Ameritrade could replicate its results, and the company's stock suffered as concerns about the ongoing credit crisis hurt stock prices across the market. Ameritrade's shares fell $1.65, or 8.7 percent, to $17.34 Thursday. Ameritrade reported $240.8 million in net income, or 40 cents per share, in the quarter that ended Dec. 31. That was up from $145.6 million, or 24 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.
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