Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Tuesday, January 17, 2006"Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News"
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PAUL KANGAS: Stocks opened broadly lower on that sharp rise in oil prices and not helping things was an almost 3 percent tumble in Tokyo`s Nikkei stock index, its worst day in two years. By noon, the Dow was off 74 points; NASDAQ off 18. The market stabilized this afternoon, but any chances for a big comeback were squashed by caution ahead of those earnings from IBM, Intel, and Yahoo! The Dow industrial average came in with a loss of 63 1/2 points at 10,896.32. The NASDAQ Composite fell 14 1/3 points to 2302.69. Standard & Poor`s 500 down 4 2/3 points ending at 1282.93. In the bond market, the 10-year note gained 5/32, putting the yield at 4.34 percent.
Volume leader on the big board, 32 1/2 million shares trading Tyco (TYC) down $0.92. Two downgrades hurt the stock. Citigroup downgraded it from "buy" to "hold" and JPMorgan from "over weight" down to "neutral."
Lucent Technology (LU) down a dime.
Pfizer (PFE) fell $0.39.
Time Warner (TWX) edging a dime higher.
ConocoPhillips (COP) in the strong oil group, up $3.53 on those higher oil prices today. Let`s have a look at some other major oils.
Chevron (CVX) up $1.50.
Marathon(MRO) just a fractional gainer.
But Occidental Petroleum (OXY) up $2.35. The whole group was very firm.
Boston Scientific (BSX) down $1.30. You heard the news there.
ExxonMobil (XOM) in that firm oil group, up $0.57.
Verizon (VZ) $0.70 drop.
Wal-Mart (WMT) stores fell $0.48.
And Ford Motor (F), tenth in big board volume, down $0.24.
Continental Airlines (CAL) down $2.23. That airline group of course very weak because of the high oil prices. And they overrode some good news for Continental, which reduced its fourth quarter loss to only $0.53 a share from $3.16 in the negative last year. And Standard & Poor`s repeated a "strong buy" on Continental, but it didn`t have much impact. Let`s have some look at other airline stocks, all on the downside especially, US Airways Group off just over $4 a share.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) dropping $1.27. Merrill Lynch downgraded it from "neutral" to a "sell" recommendation.
Then we see Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) down $4.32. The talks have ended with a private equity group that was interested in buying the firm somewhere around $65 a share. Talks terminated.
Quanex (NX) up $5.72. The company now sees its first quarter earnings at around $1 to $1.05 and that`s 35 percent above its previous earnings guidance, nice move in the stock.
United States Steel (X) up $2.68, maybe a little delayed reaction from Friday when CS First Boston brokerage upgraded it from "neutral" to "out perform" with a $57 a share target for the price.
Dana Corp (DCN), another weak automotive stock, off $1.40 or 20 1/2 percent drop. Dana reported a third quarter loss of $1.3 billion. That works out to $8.50 in the red and that`s versus earnings of $0.28 a share a year ago.
Finally we see McGraw-Hill (MHP) doing well, up $2.05. Citigroup upgraded it from "hold" to a "buy."
Google (GOOG) topped the NASDAQ actives, up $0.86. The company will acquire dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million. dMarc is in the radio advertising business and it may soon turn into the television advertising business.
Apple Computer (AAPL) $0.88 drop.
Intel (INTC) $0.27 loss there.
Microsoft (MSFT) off $0.20.
Sandisk (SNDK) dropped $1.29. Citigroup downgraded Sandisk from "buy" to "hold" on a valuation basis.
Yahoo! (YHOO) closed up $0.21, but after those disappointing after the bell results, I saw the stock as low as $34.96 in after hours trading.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.24 loss.
Rambus (RMBS) up $0.02.
Applied Materials (AMAT) $0.39 loss.
And Qualcomm (QCOM) fell $0.52.
Biocryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX), look at that strong chart, up another $3.37 today. The story here, the company has received fast track designation from the FDA to get approval for its drug to treat avian flu.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
