9:00AM Wall Street to open higher on tame inflation data
U.S. stock futures indicated a positive market opening on Friday following a report which showed the lowest inflation reading since March 2004. The Commerce Department said that core consumer prices rose 0.1% in May, coming in line with expectations. Among pre-market highlights, Research In Motion (
RIMM: chart) surged 20% after posting 73% earnings jump on strong BlackBerry sales.
Apple Inc. (
APPL: chart) added 1.2% on news that it is set to begin sales of its widely anticipated iPhone device. Commerce Bancorp (
CBH: chart) jumped 7% in electronic trade after the company said it had settled two federal regulatory probes. S&P 500 futures were up 2.3 points, above fair value. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 5 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 6.25 points
8:30AM Research in Motion topped earnings and revenue Research In Motion forecast.
Research in Motion (
RIMM: chart) posted 73% net income profit jump of $223.2 million compared with $128.8 million last year. First-quarter earnings per share came in at $1.17, much higher than 67 cents the previous year. Quarterly results beat analyst expectations of $1.06 per share for the recent period.
Revenue for Q1 rose nearly 77%, coming in at $1.082 billion compared with $613.1 million last year. This also exceeded analyst estimates for revenue of $1.05 billion. The company contributed the robust quarterly earnings to strong BlackBerry sales. Company’s shares soared 19% in pre-market trading.
S&P 500 futures (SPc1) were up 2.3 points, above fair value, a mathematical formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract.
Dow Jones industrial average futures (DJc1) rose 5 points, and Nasdaq 100 (NDc1) futures were up 6.25 points.
7:30AM NY-6:30PM Mumbai Sensex zooms 146 points on a large-cap rally.
The
Sensex on BSE finished 145.94 points higher, or 1.01%, at 14,650.51, just 73 points away from its all-time intra-day high of 14,724.
The market-breadth was very strong as there were 1,484 stocks which advanced, 1,107 which declined and 90 which were unchanged. Of the 30 stocks in the Sensex, 22 advanced, while the rest declined. The turnover on BSE was Rs 4,817 crore, slightly lower than Rs 4,848 crore on Thursday. On NSE, the turnover was Rs 10,681 crore, much lower than Rs 12,193 crore on Thursday.
Economic news
The wholesale weekly inflation rate decreased to a 13-month low as prices of food and cereals dropped. Wholesale prices advanced 4.03% in the week ended June 16 from a year earlier, down from 4.28% in the previous week, beating analysts’ expectations for 4.13%.
The Indian rupee advanced 0.2% to 40.765 against the dollar in morning trading in Mumbai. It has risen 6.7% this quarter, the best performance among ten of the most traded Asian currencies. The rupee advance is according to investors due to the booming economy and strong market attracting a lot of investment from abroad.
Trading highlights
SBI was the most active stock with a turnover of Rs 154.80 crore followed by GMR Infrastructure and Reliance Industries.
Advancers
Reliance Energy zoomed nearly 6% to Rs 614. Reliance Energy’s subsidiary Rosa Power Supply, on June 26 2007 took out long-term loans of around Rs 2,000 crore for the first stage of its 600 MW power project. HDFC Bank soared nearly 5% to Rs 1,144. Other banking stocks also rose. ICICI bank rose 1.3% to Rs 955 and the State Bank of India, advanced 3.7% to Rs 1,523. SBI surged as reports circulate that the bank intends to launch a private equity fund with a corpus of $1 billion.
