By Sarah Jones
Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stock-index futures drifted between gains and losses before a report on existing home sales and the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh.
Electronic Arts Inc. slid 3.2 percent in Germany after Microsoft Corp. said it’s not seeking to buy the video-game publisher. Red Hat Inc. rose 3.4 percent as the biggest seller of the Linux operating system reported earnings that beat estimates and Bank of America Corp. recommended the shares.
Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in December added less than 0.1 percent to 1,059.20 at 10:18 a.m. in London, after dropping as much as 0.6 percent earlier. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were little changed at 9,715. Nasdaq-100 Index futures gained 0.1 percent to 1,726.50.
U.S. President Barack Obama and his counterparts from G-20 nations meet today warning that the recovery is still too weak to start reversing lifelines to banks and the broader economy.
“I think there is a growing feeling that the markets have got ahead of economic reality,” said David Morrison, a London- based market strategist at GFT. “There is also a bit of nervousness ahead of G-20 as there is likely to be something about financial regulation.”
The S&P 500 yesterday dropped from its highest level since October. A 57 percent rally since March 9 has left the measure valued at about 20 times the reported earnings of its companies, the most expensive level since 2004, according to weekly data compiled by Bloomberg.
Year-End Forecast
The Federal Reserve signaled that the U.S. economy’s return to growth is insufficient to withdraw stimulus as officials seek to reduce the highest unemployment rate in a quarter century. While the economy has “picked up,” the central bank’s planned asset purchases will help ensure a “gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization,” the Fed’s Open Market Committee said yesterday.
Sales of existing U.S. homes probably climbed in August to the highest level in two years, economists said before a report today. Purchases rose 2.1 percent to a 5.35 million annual rate, according to the median forecast of 74 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. It would be the fifth consecutive gain, capping the longest stretch of increases since 2004. The report is due at 10 a.m. Washington time.
Morgan Stanley strategist Jason Todd today raised his year- end forecast for the S&P 500 to 1,050 from a previous estimate of 900. That’s still 1 percent below yesterday’s closing price.
‘Bull Market’
“The current rally is typical of what follows major bear markets and is not, in our view, the start of a new multi-year bull market,” New York-based Todd wrote in a report to clients.
Electronic Arts fell 3.2 percent to $19.19 in German trading, following a 7.1 percent rally yesterday, as Microsoft said it isn’t seeking to buy the video-game publisher.
“There’s no truth” to the speculation, David Dennis, a Microsoft spokesman, said late yesterday. “We have no plans to purchase EA.”
Red Hat climbed 3.4 percent to $25.72 as sales rose 12 percent to $183.6 million. Analysts predicted $179.4 million. Excluding stock compensation and other costs, profit was 20 cents a share, compared with the 15-cent average estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
Bank of America raised its recommendation on the stock to “buy” from “neutral.”
The owners of Select Medical Holdings Inc. may almost double their money when the hospital operator goes public tomorrow as leveraged buyout firms take advantage of the steepest stock market rally in 70 years. Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe and Thoma Cressey Bravo LLC will hold a stake valued at more than $1 billion if Select Medical fetches $12 a share, the midpoint for its initial public offering price. The private- equity firms invested $617 million in cash when acquiring the company in February 2005.
To contact the reporters on this story: Sarah Jones in London at sjones35@bloomberg.net.
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