Investors “bum-rush” the market on this last day of November, exchanging over 4 billion shares, almost twice the regular volume, just on the Big Board (NYSE) alone. This is definitely the hallmark of institutional buying and selling; money managers leave their marks on many stocks today.
Yet all the buying and selling fails to inspire much movement in the major indices. The market closes flat despite the deluge of economic data that continues to reiterate the…..soft landing – yes, you guessed right – scenario.
What about the dollar? Well it continues its descent against the Euro and the British Sterling – actually drops to a 14-year low against cable (sterling). U.S. exporters and multinationals may cheer the tumbling greenback but it’s safe to say many Americans – the ones that have passports that is - won’t be traveling overseas this holiday season.
Bonds actually see better action, buoyed by weak manufacturing data. The benchmark 10-year note rallies to yield to a 10-month low – more bad news for the dollar. Falling yields suggest the Fed is more likely to cut short-term interest rates than raise them, which is what the dollar needs right now.
Nevertheless, November has been good to Wall Street. The three major indices post gains for the month:
Worst-known mgr 4.25%
Nasdaq 2.75%
S&P 1.65%
Dow 1.17%
The Dow and the S&P have now posted their longest monthly winning streaks - six months - since August 2003, according to Bloomberg, something bulls will be really proud of.
All hail the Vista. MSFT releases the new operating system to business customers today, though you wouldn’t know this by the reaction of the stock price. You and I can expect to get our hands on the system from January 30. Wonderful! Now that Vista is out, what does MSFT do now? Going after Sony with the 360, or Apple with the Zune, is not the answer.
MSFT needs to get crazy innovative again because there is a danger lurking ahead. Web 2.0 is gaining momentum and many of the applications that made Mr. Softee rich, such as Word and Excel, are migrating from the PC to the internet.
Google already offers free web-based word-processing and spreadsheet programs to facilitate seamless collaboration. All this is probably old news to MSFT. But the problem with MSFT is that it likes to watch from the sidelines, until it is almost too late to catch up. If it's not careful, competitors will do to it what it did to Netscape with Explorer: nullify and void. Redmond, Washington, do you copy?
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