DALTON TANONAKA, CNN ANCHOR, BIZASIA: The U.S. market will get a helping glove from Michael Jackson in opening Thursday trading in New York. CNN's Sasha Salama is at the Nasdaq marketsite. Sasha, I guess, any help is needed.</s>SASHA SALAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm telling you, Dalton, this is going to be quite a publicity stunt. And you're right, any help is needed because the Nasdaq has been under water, as we all know, the Nasdaq finishing at 1843. So investors and the public anxiously awaiting the arrival of Michael Jackson, who's going to open the market here and turn on this big blue wall by pressing a button. That said, we do have some news after the close from yesterday that investors are digesting this morning. Sun Microsystem issued mid-quarter update and said, guess what folks, this company may be reporting an operating loss for its fiscal first quarter basically because of weakness in Europe and especially Japan. Sun says that the U.S. is a touch behind forecasts. So we're watching SUNW, which is down nearly a dollar after loosing ground yesterday. Also, Altera, the maker of programmable computer chips. ALTR had its mid-quarter update after the stock fell sharply on Wednesday. Altera's standing by its forecast for the third quarter, saying revenues will decline 15 to 20 percent. And Microsoft, the European Commission says it's expanded investigation into the software giant to see whether it's illegally tying its media playing software to its Windows operating system -- Dalton.</s>TANONAKA: All right, Sasha, thank you. END TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Michael Jackson Set to Ring the Bell