manufacturing falls short of expectations, page-2

dow average stocks fall in europe Dow Average Stocks Fall in Europe; EBay Slips After Purchase
June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks trading in Europe fell. EBay Inc., the world's largest Internet auctioneer, dropped in Germany after announcing its largest acquisition in more than 2 1/2 years.

All but one of the 21 Dow stocks trading slipped as of 8:12 a.m. in London. Dow Average futures expiring in June fell 4 to 10,533. Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures lost 0.3 to 1200.90. Nasdaq-100 Index futures were unchanged at 1557.5.

EBay fell 43 cents to $38.68. The company agreed to buy comparison-shopping site Shopping.com for about $620 million in cash, they said in a release.

The auctioneer will pay $21 a share, or a 20 percent premium over yesterday's closing price, for Brisbane, California-based Shopping.com, the companies said yesterday. The acquisition, which gives EBay a foothold in the fast-growing comparison-shopping market, will reduce earnings per share in 2005.

Ciena Corp., a maker of telephone-networking equipment, fell 6 cents to $2.39. The company may report before markets open that it lost 5 cents a share in the second quarter, down from a loss of 9 cents a year earlier, according to a Thomson Financial survey.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. may be active. The third-biggest U.S. bank said yesterday after markets closed that second-quarter trading results through May 31 were ``the worst the firm has experienced in some time.''

Unless business picks up in June, trading revenue may fall from the $842 million totaled in last year's second quarter, the New York-based company said.

Economic Releases

A government report scheduled for today may show the productivity of U.S. workers increased last quarter at the fastest pace in nine months, while labor costs accelerated, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Initial jobless claims probably rose by 2,000 last week to 325,000, a level consistent with job growth, economists forecast ahead of another release. The Labor Department will issue both reports at 8:30 a.m. Washington time. The figures on productivity are a revision of the preliminary figures released last month.

Factory orders probably rebounded 1.1 percent in April, according to the median forecast in a separate Bloomberg survey before today's 10 a.m. release from the Commerce Department.

U.S. stocks advanced yesterday after a survey that showed manufacturing grew more slowly and cost pressures eased signaled the Federal Reserve may soon end its series of interest-rate increases.

The S&P 500 increased 0.9 percent to 1202.22, the highest since March 14. The Dow Average added 0.8 percent to 10,549.87, a level not seen since March 21. A gain in Google Inc. helped push the Nasdaq Composite Index up 1 percent.