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Wall St. in a bullish mood
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May 11, 1999: 10:21 a.m. ET
Stocks surge at the open amid strong retail earnings, gains in the tech sector
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The sun shone bright on Wall Street Tuesday morning, with U.S. stocks getting a strong boost from signs that earnings in the retail sector are healthy, as well as a continued recovery among technology issues as a slew of deals and alliances continued to keep that sector abuzz.
Shortly after 10 a.m. the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 41.81 points to 11,049.06. Gainers beat losers 1,440 to 922 as trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange reached 124 million shares.
The Nasdaq Composite rallied 30.42, or 1.2 percent, to 2,556.81, powered by renewed investor interest toward technology and especially Internet stocks. The S&P 500 index gained 11.45 to 1,351.75.
Bonds lingered near unchanged levels, slowly digesting the release of the first-quarter productivity report and awaiting direction from the afternoon's auction of 5-year notes. The bellwether 30-year Treasury note traded 1/32 of a point higher in price for a yield of 5.78 percent.
The dollar, however, made small advances against both the yen and the euro.
Web stocks, retailers dominate
In the stock market, much of the action was concentrated in the two newsmaking sectors of the day -- retail stocks and shares of Internet related companies.
Among the Web players, America Online (AOL) climbed 9-13/16 to 138-1/8 after the world's largest online service provider announced a deal to develop its own AOL TV product in partnership with four other companies: DirectTV, Hughes Network Systems, Philips Electronics and Network Computer.
The news, which comes as a sign that competition is heating up to provide consumers with Internet access via their television sets, helped boost buying in the entire Web-related sector.
Yahoo! (YHOO) gained 8-3/16 to 163-7/8 and Amazon.com (AMZN) was up 5-1/2 to 152-3/8.
Meanwhile, a more traditional sector, retailing, also found buyers amid signs that the industry is benefiting from the strength of the economy and that bottom lines in the sector are improving.
Leading the pack and making the news, Dow component Wal-Mart (WMT) rallied 1-7/8 to 47-1/16 after reporting first-quarter profit growth of 39 percent and beating market estimates.
Wall-Mart's earnings report encouraged buying in the shares of some of the company's rivals, with Kmart (KM) gaining 1/2 to 18-1/8.
Finally, biotech giant Immunex (IMNX) rallied 35-1/16, or nearly 33 percent, to 142-1/16 after the company said it would ask the Food and Drug Administration to allow broader use of its arthritis drug Enbrel.
-- by staff writer Malina Poshtova Zang
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