Hello traders!

Not quite so much in the way of reporting tommorow but still enough to cause a bit of excitement here and there. DGE could be fun, but REL probably not.

The US has settled down a bit now with major indices improving their stance but trading is thin. One area attracting buyers, however, is steel....where stocks have surged amid reports highlighting an increased pace of M&A activity due to better market conditions. US Steel prices have remained at higher levels ever since turning the corner in late 2003.

The Dow was last off 16 points with the Nasdaq down 2 and the S&P500 off 1.30.

See you in the morning with the breaking UK news...

Sleep tight!

G.

Good morning traders!

The US market shrugged off late-day buying efforts to close mixed as investors maintained a rather tepid attitude about equities following Greenspan's testimony, despite encouraging economic data and relatively upbeat earnings reports.

The Dow closed just 2.44 points short of the line at 10,834.88 with the Nasdaq a mere 1.78 points down at 2,087.43 and the S&P500 marginally better at 1,210.34.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei has just closed down 18.96 points at 11,582.72.

Back with some UK news soon....

Happy trading!

G.

Market expectations :-

Diageo six months to December pretax profit before exceptionals 1.24bn vs 1.29bn; interim dividend 11.1p vs 10.6p

Reed Elsevier year to December adjusted pretax profit 1bn-1.02bn stg vs 1.01bn.

Morning all.

Morning

LAS - developing. New high yesterday
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/20050217070000P35C7.html

LGT - some interesting volume increases recently ahead of this hook up
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/20050217070000PF4B5.html

AMT - right on cue after last night's TV. They seem to be way ahead of forecasts, but margins reduced - obviously had Miranda in sales. ;-))
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700016801I.html

SPH - distribution agreement
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700047019I.html

POT - small potentially interesting outfit?
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700047021I.html

PDC - these popped up in the weekend filter. Not the best update by the look of it
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700047040I.html

CIU - Nuke contract
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700067057I.html

TTH - acquisition
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700077059I.html

NMI - interesting. Wonder if this might turn the chart
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700077067I.html

CNE - drilling doesn't seem disappointing to me. 104m of vertical net oil is big by anyone's standards
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700087079I.html

PDG - finals look OK. What's the future for car dealers given BoE yesterday? Hmm
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700107080I.html

LWB - decent enough
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700157094I.html

DPH - marketing agreement. Was long these a couple of months back
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200502170700087073I.html

ELA - MS treatment update
http://www.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/20050217073000Z0692.html

Have a good day

Morning all.

Added to BFC and NCC longs

Afternoon all

The on going saga at work is we finally paid an engineer to make sure we are connected to our BT Broadband line so we now have internet. However despite paying for static IP addresses BT can't tell us what they are or even if we have any!

So now we have paid someone to reconfigure our Server so we can collect our e-mails instead of having them sent to us.

Unfortunetly it is going to be 7-10 days before the business is transfered to our new supplier - and in the meantime BT Broadband cannot help, or provide us with information......

Ironically BT customer services have been wonderful - BT broadband customer services (different company which will not talk or deal with the other company!)is a nightmare.

I think the problem is that we are a business customer not a residential customer!

Long FUTR earlier.

little woman, you should move to PlusNet, excellent customer service and very cheap too :-)

Thanks Kayak, took a look and they looked good. Trouble is I'm not the decision maker - just have to deal with the consequences caused by the decision maker. (Perhaps that's why 2 of my predecessers walked out of the job!)

You sound like "The Apprentice" lw. ;-)))