After a weak start, Wall Street turned mixed Wednesday -- the final day of the quarter -- as tech and Internet stocks attracted renewed interest from investors.
Uncertainty about the market is starting to dissipate. The combat in Yugoslavia so far has had little impact on trading, and recent corporate earnings have been surprisingly robust. Al "The Man" Greenspan opted to leave interest rates alone for the time being, and the US economy finished 1998 with a spurt of growth, expanding at a seasonally adjusted 6 percent annual rate in the last three months of the year.
Can't ask for much more than that.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 8.60 points to 9904.66 in mid-afternoon trading, and the Wired Index was 2.66 higher at 639.05. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 14.15 to 2494.44, and the S&P 500 was down 0.74 at 1300.01.
"The market has shaken off its hangover from Dow 10K," said Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at George K. Baum & Co. "Tech stocks are having a good day almost across the board."
One stock that's not having a good day, though, is Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG), which fell US$1.25 to $21.75 on its first day of trading. With 100 million shares sold at an initial price of $23 apiece, the company raised $2.3 billion, making this one of the largest IPOs ever. But Pepsi had two things going against it.
First, it's not Pepsi.com.
Second, the sugar-water bottler went public just two days after Coca-Cola warned that its worldwide sales are now in a slump, prompting a number of analysts to slash their earnings estimates for the company.
"They fell into the Coke trap," Belski said, noting that investors are prudent to steer clear of Pepsi Bottling's stock in light of current conditions in the soft-drink market.
Still, conditions in the Internet market aren't exactly profits-a-plenty, and that doesn't stop investors from throwing money at any IPO with a dot-com pedigree. Latest example: ZDNet (ZDZ), representing the online assets of publisher Ziff-Davis (ZD), surged 81 percent to $34.38 in its trading debut. And this despite its parent tumbling 24 percent to $22 after being downgraded by Merrill Lynch.
Also, don't forget Priceline.com (PCLN), which advanced 20 percent to $82.94 on its second trading day after more than quadrupling in value on Tuesday. The provider of cut-rate plane tickets and hotel rooms now has a market value of more than $10 billion -- and has yet to make a dime.
Priceline pitchman William Shatner, on the other hand, made a bundle. Captain Kirk received 125,000 shares for being featured in the company's "really big" ad campaign, making his stake now worth about $10 million.
Put that in your photon torpedo and smoke it.
