Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Friday, February 03, 2006
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PAUL KANGAS: That specter of higher interest rates put stocks under pressure, so just before noon hour, the Dow was off 56 points, NASDAQ down 21. An afternoon rally attempt failed as oil prices rose and investors displayed their usual pre-weekend caution. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a loss of 58 1/3 points at 10,793.62 today. The Dow rose only once this week and dropped 113 1/2 points overall. The NASDAQ Composite fell 19 points to close at 2,262.58 today. It rose twice, fell three times this week, losing 41 2/3 points overall. The Standard & Poor`s 500 Index lost 6.81 closing at 1,264.03 today. In the bond market, the 10- year note rose 9/32nds to 99 25/32nds, putting the yield at 4.53 percent.
Big board volume leader as it has been every day this week, Time Warner (TWX) today trading 29.4 million shares, moving up $0.16. Next Tuesday, Carl Icahn and his investment group will present a report on how to enhance the value of the media conglomerate.
Lucent Technology (LU) showed no change.
Then Motorola (MOT) a $0.65 drop.
General Electric (GE) fell a nickel.
Pfizer (PFE) down a half a dollar. That was fifth in volume.
Bank of America (BAC) fell $0.35.
AT&T (T) bucking the trend, up $0.27.
Tyco Intl (TYC) $0.22 gain there.
Sprint Nextel (S) $0.21 loss.
Tenth in volume was ExxonMobil (XOM) losing $0.56 a share.
Honeywell Intl (HON), which is a Dow stock, up $0.70. Citigroup upgraded it from "hold" to "buy" and boosted its price target from $40 to $46 a share on Honeywell common stock.
Standard Pacific (SPF), the home builder, down $1.11. Fourth quarter earnings were higher, $2.22 versus $2.01 last year, but the company said its new home orders in the fourth quarter fell 11 percent, a little cooling in that market.
Georgia Gulf (GGC), which is a chemical firm, down $3.36. Fourth quarter earnings dropped to $0.55 from $0.77 a year ago and sales actually dropped 12 percent.
Esco Technologies (ESE) doing well, up $5.26. First quarter earnings dropped only $0.08 versus $0.40 last year, but you can see it`s made an acquisition and also it boosted its 2006 low end earnings guidance from $1.15 to $1.20 a share.
Edwards Lifesciences (EW) up $3.39. Big fourth quarter earnings, $0.61 versus $0.42 a year ago and the company boosted its 2006 earnings guidance. Standard & Poor`s repeated a "buy" recommendation.
Humana (HUM) losing $2.10. CS First Boston downgraded it from "neutral" to "under perform."
And Mylan Labs (MYL) moving up $2.02 on higher earnings. Third quarter excluding items $0.25, up from $0.13 last year and a penny above the Street estimate. Wachovia upgraded the stock from "market perform" to "out perform."
Then a couple of new issues, HealthSpring (HS), which is a Medicare management firm, 18.8 million shares offered to the public at $19.50, opened at $22.25, the high of the day $22.64.
Energy Transfer Equity LP (ETE) went public at a price of $21 on 21 million shares, opened at $23, the high of the day $23.25, both nice debuts there.
Google (GOOG) topped the active list tumbling $14.49, no doubt in part because of amazon.com`s rather disappointing results out after the close yesterday.
Then Microsoft (MSFT) fell $0.14.
Intel (INTC) $0.36 drop.
Apple Computer (AAPL) $0.25 loss there.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) down $0.22, fifth in dollar volume.
amazon.com (AMZN) itself off $4.41 on those disappointing results.
Yahoo! (YHOO) $0.71 loss.
Oracle (ORCL) fell $0.18.
Dell (DELL) $0.26 gain.
And Ebay (EBAY) was down $1 exactly.
OccuLogix (RHEO), look at that loss, almost 68 percent on the downside. Late stage trials for the company`s product to treat macular degeneration of the eye showed no results better than a placebo.
And then Fossil Inc (FOSL), which is the watch designer maker and distributor down $5.81. The company cut its fourth quarter earnings guidance from $0.48 to as low as $0.28 a share.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
