Stocks Manage to Expand Gains

• By the tickerspy.com Staff
• On 5:02 pm EDT, Thursday October 15, 2009

The market played tug-of-war after a patch of mixed earnings reports, with the bulls garnering enough strength to pull the major market indices into positive territory. The dueling reactions to Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG - News) and IBM's (NYSE: IBM - News) reports could set up a similar day tomorrow, but we'll also have to see what General Electric (NYSE: GE - News) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC - News) have to say in the morning. Tomorrow should be an interesting day to end the week.

The Recreational Vehicle Stocks Index was the top performing tickerspy Index on the day, led by Polaris Industries (NYSE: PII - News) with a 11% gain.

A late-day push sent stocks into the green, with the Dow up 47 points to 10,063. The S&P rose 5 points to 1,097, while the Nasdaq squeezed out a point gain to 2,173. Oil surged $2.40 to $77.58 a barrel, while gold fell -$14.10 to $1050.60 an ounce. On the economic front, the Labor Department said jobless claims fell to a seasonally adjusted 514,000 from an upwardly revised 524,000 the prior week. In a different report, the agency said the consumer price index rose 0.2% in September, in line with expectations. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, also rose 0.2%.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS - News) topped today's earnings headlines, as the investment bank recorded a profit of $3.03 billion, or $5.25 per share, compared to $810 million, or $1.81 per share, a year ago. Analysts were looking for EPS of $4.24. Revenue more than doubled to $12.37 billion from $6.04 billion. The stock fell -1.9%. One-hundred fifty Pro investors counted the stock among their top-15 holdings at the start of Q3.

Motorcycle maker Harley Davidson (NYSE: HOG - News) saw its Q3 earnings fall -84% to $26.5 million, or 11 cents per share, from $166.5 million, or 71 cents per share, a year earlier. The company recorded $69.6 million in charges related to restructuring, discontinuing the production of its Buell brand, and an impairment charge to sell its MV Agusta business. Revenue fell -21% to $1.12 billion, just above estimates. The company expects to ship 222,000-227,000 motorcycles this year, compared to an earlier forecast of between 212,000-228,000. The stock rose 5.5%.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK - News) shares tumbled -11.1% after the cellphone maker saw its shares of the global smartphone market drop to 35% from 41% last quarter. For Q3, the Finnish company lost -559 million euros ($836 million), or -15 euro cents per share, compared to a profit of 1.09 billion euros, or 29 euro cents per share, a year ago. Adjusted EPS was a profit of 17 euro cents. Sales fell -20% to 9.8 billion euros (about $14.6 billion). Thirty-four Pro investors counted the stock among their top-15 holdings at the start of Q3. Shares of PetSmart (Nasdaq: PETM - News) rose 8.2% after the pet supply retailer raised its Q3 and full-year outlooks. For Q3, the company now anticipates EPS of 25-29 cents versus a prior forecast of 20-24 cents. It said same-store sales will be "essentially flat." For the full year, the company upped its guidance to between $1.43-$1.51 from $1.37-$1.45.

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