dow up but gas down

Dow was up overnight but natural gas futures were down 6.5% which may account for the big corrections with gas stocks over the last two trading days... so we may still have a hard time today, hope that's not the case. Good luck all

* SEPTEMBER 28, 2009, 3:23 P.M. ET

US Stocks Higher As M&A Pick-Up Boost Confidence; DJIA Up 125
By Donna Kardos Yesalavich and Geoffrey Rogow


A fresh round of corporate deal making on Monday helped lead to broad-based gains for stocks, which are closing in on the best quarterly climb in more than 10 years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was 125 points higher in recent action, up 1.3%, at 9790, helped by gains in 27 of its 30 components. The S&P 500 was up 1.7% as all of its sectors advanced. The Dow and the S&P 500 are each up by more than 15% since the beginning of July, on course for the strongest performance since the fourth quarter of 1998.

After last week suffering the sharpest declines since early July - the Dow shed 155 points - stocks were back in favor following deals involving several high-profile companies, including Johnson & Johnson and Xerox.

A pickup in the pace of mergers and acquisitions tends to boost the market because it sets off a guessing game among investors who begin to buy shares of companies they believe are likely acquisition targets. This belief pushed up stocks right at the open, with the rest of a light-volume session being driven by investors wanting to put money back in the stock market after last week's decline.

"If you're living on absolute returns, you have to be putting your hands up and just throwing money at the stock market," said Daniel Morgan, a portfolio manager with Synovus Securities. "All these hedge and other kind of funds feeling left out are saying 'let's get the last 1000 points in the Dow'."

Notably, the Dow is fewer than 250 points away from the psychologically significant 10,000 level after a six-month rally.

On the deals front, Johnson & Johnson shares rose 1.2% after it said it bought 18.1% of Crucell for $442.7 million. Crucell shares sank 6.3%. Xerox dropped 15% after it agreed to pay $6.4 billion for outsourcing and information-services company Affiliated Computer Services. ACS surged 14%.

"You've got two big companies out here willing to stick their neck out and do some M&A, so people are thinking maybe they're seeing things are a little bit better, or they're not too scared to do these deals anyway," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist with PNC Wealth Management.

In addition, Abbott Laboratories climbed 3% after it said it will buy the pharmaceutical business of Belgium's Solvay for as much as $7 billion in a deal that would expand its presence in emerging markets.

Bullish analyst calls also helped drive buying. Cisco Systems was up 4.9% after Barclays Capital upgraded the networking company to an overweight rating from equal weight, citing an improved outlook for its business in both Europe and North America. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index was up 2%.

The financial sector received a boost after analysts at Morgan Stanley forecast declining credit losses for banks over the next 12 to 18 months and said large-cap banks are "largely done with capital repair." Citigroup shares gained 3.4%.

Volume was light due to the Yom Kippur holiday. Composite activity in New York Stock Exchange-listed names was recently slightly less than three billion shares, on pace to fall short of the full-day average around six billion shares for the year to date. Advancers outnumbered decliners by more than four to one.

Front-month crude-oil futures gained 82 cents at $66.84 a barrel in New York. Comex gold for September delivery rose $2.30 a troy ounce, or 0.23%, to settle at $992.50. The dollar was mixed. One euro cost $1.4611, down from $1.4670 late Friday. One dollar fetched 89.55 Japanese yen, down from 89.85 yen.

Treasury prices were mixed. The 10-year note gained 4/32 to yield 3.307%.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090928-710615.html


Energy


PRICE CHANGE %CHANGE TIME
BRENT CRUDE FUTR (USD/bbl.)65.690 0.580 0.89 15:44
GAS OIL FUT (ICE) (USD/MT) 546.000 3.500 0.65 15:44
GASOLINE RBOB FUT (USd/gal.) 163.900 1.850 1.14 15:43
HEATING OIL FUTR (USd/gal.)169.300 1.590 0.95 15:44

NATURAL GAS FUTR (USD/MMBtu) 3.729 -0.256 -6.42 15:05

WTI CRUDE FUTURE (USD/bbl.)66.950 0.930 1.41 15:44
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/cfutures.html