“Well this is stressful and ironic…I’m hearing about today’s T-Mobile merger on a payphone.”
Dow: 13,495 (+0.09%) S&P 500: 1,451 (+0.36%)
We assume mile high MarketSnacks faithful are busy pregaming the 1st first Presidential Debate of the election season with a local combo of rocky mountain oysters on the grill and an adjacent 6-pack of Elk Mountain Ambers. Back on Wall Street, investors are in jobs mode…specifically over today’s optimistic ADP employment estimate ahead of Friday’s official government report. The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index also helped move markets after surging in August (the survey covers business activity in the service sector nationwide). Big news in the telecommunications area led the way as the Dow added 12 points today.
ADP reports 162,000 jobs added in September
Legendary payroll-tracking company ADP reported that the US economy added 162,000 private-sector, non-farm jobs in September, higher than the 140,000 economists expect. Like a colorful trailer before a serious movie, ADP’s numbers are an estimate that investors use to preview for Friday’s official government jobs report for the month. ADP has overestimated its forecasts over the last few months (their August number was twice as much as the actual amount of jobs added) compared to the Labor Department’s analysis. General consensus for September though is that the employment market has improved after August’s disappointing 103,000 jobs added.
Telecommunications stocks move on T-Mobile/Metro PCS
Telecommunications stocks are hopping around the charts this week. Today word spread that T-Mobile‘s American operations would merge with MetroPCS to form a cost-conscious competitor to AT&T and Verizon. The puppet master of the transaction is Deutsche Telekom (DTE), who already owns T-Mobile and is purchasing Metro. After rising 18% following yesterday’s announcement, MetroPCS dropped 10% today as the final offer price of the transaction was finalized – investors were over-enthusiastic yesterday and adjusted down today.
Netflix rises on customer satisfaction and HP’s struggles continue
Netflix (NFLX) rose 11% after a Citigroup equity analyst (equity analysts research companies’ earnings power and assign a target stock price) noted in a report that customer satisfaction is higher than ever. We become more satisfied with our MarketSnacks headquarters Netflix account after realizing how popular our username/password make us with our limitless moocher friends. The ugly duckling of the tech world Hewlett Packard (HPQ) dropped 13% today as the CEO estimated earnings for the next 12 months way below analyst expectations. HP’s transition away from personal computers has been bumpy and won’t end soon – the CEO Meg Whitman conceded that the turnaround isn’t easy or fast. Or fun. At all.
Tomorrow:
- Some more of the week’s big econ data: Weekly Jobless Claims & August Factory Orders
- Minutes from the Fed‘s last policy meeting…Investors sift through the details of what was said behind closed doors
- Some of our readers at the University of Denver sent us this (“if one of the candidates goes over the allotted time, bottoms-up until the host stops them”). So enjoy the debate just a tad bit more…
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