Industrials Move Up 11.18 Points; Takeover Speculation Fuels Shares
NEW YORK -- Program trading and takeover speculation in media and entertainment stocks fueled a stock rally.</br></br>In one of the market's busier Mondays this year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 11.18 to 2304.80. Most of that gain -- which gave the average its first close above 2300 in about three weeks -- was made in late morning when rallies in bond futures triggered futures-related program buying of stocks.</br></br>Not all the program buying was futures-related; some involved large purchases by institutional investors that had put off buying until yesterday's beginning of the new quarter.</br></br>Despite a host of negative market factors, Nancy Gallagher, stock-index futures analyst at Thomson McKinnon Securities, says she sees "some willingness on the part of money managers to breathe easier and come into the market." Even though there's "nothing cooking" in the actual stock market, she says, the program activity involving purchases of baskets of big stocks might give stocks "a real short-term gain here."</br></br>Stocks could use such a push, say traders, who complain that individual-investor interest remains low. Still, the market's first-quarter performance wasn't shabby: Standard & Poor's reported yesterday that first-quarter total return on the S&P 500 index -- used by some $150 billion of "index funds" as their benchmark -- was 7.09% with dividends reinvested and 6.17% without reinvestment.