Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Friday, June 16, 2006
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PAUL KANGAS: Well, investors viewed stock prices as a bit high after two days of huge gains, so they did some profit-taking this morning. The Dow fell 30 points by noon when the NASDAQ was down 21 points. The mild setback kept traders optimistic and prevented a pickup in selling pressure this afternoon, so at the final bell, the market posted just modest losses across the board. Dow Industrial Average closed down a mere 2/3 of a point at 11,014.55 today.
This week it fell three times, rose twice, had a net gain of 122.63 points. The NASDAQ Composite ended off 14.20 at 2129.95 today. It also fell three times and rose twice this week, but lost 5.11 points overall. Standard & Poor`s 500 was down 4.62, ending at 1251.54 today. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note lost 9/32 to 99 30/32, putting the yield up at 5.14 percent.
Most active New York exchange issue on 33.7 million shares, Time Warner (TWX) down $0.15. Telecom Italia`s chairman said his company is interested in Time Warner`s AOL operations in Germany and France and Time Warner said previously it is considering the sale of those operations.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) up $1.16, had a nice move today.
GE (GE) down $0.18.
ExxonMobil (XOM) a $0.32 loss.
And Pfizer (PFE) tenth - fifth in volume, down a dime.
Lucent Tech (LU) gained $0.03.
Bank of America (BAC) off $0.49.
Motorola (MOT) $0.25 loss there.
Citigroup (C) down $0.32.
And AT&T (T), tenth in volume, edged up $0.06 a share.
Pepsico (PEP) up $0.62. UBS financial brokerage upgraded it from "neutral" to "buy." The analyst there said there`s going to be an increasing demand for defensive type stocks like Pepsico. Then we see Boston Scientific (BSX) edging up $0.57. A Delaware court upheld a previous jury verdict that Johnson and Johnson violated a Boston Scientific patent for the drug coatings on stents, so that was a positive for Boston Scientific.
Carnival Corp (CCL) up $2.02. Second quarter earnings dropped 2 percent to $0.46 from $0.47 a year ago, but that was $0.02 above the Street estimate. The company`s also going to buy back another $1 billion worth of its stock and today Merrill Lynch upgraded it from "neutral" to "buy."
Bairnco (BZ), the steel company, up $1.47. Steel Partners II, which is a hedge fund, plans to make an unsolicited tender offer for the 85 percent of the shares of Bairnco they don`t already own and the price will be at $12 per share on the tender.
Winnebago Industries (WGO), there you see it, nice move up, $2.21. You heard about the earnings and also the Baird brokerage noted that 26 percent of the stock float (ph) is in short positions in the market, but also helping is that big backlog of orders they have.
Todd Shipyards (TOD) on the other hand, down $2.95. The company had a fourth quarter loss of $0.03 versus earnings of $0.72 a year ago. Revenues dropped 26 percent. The company blamed lower business from the U.S. Navy.
And Verasun Energy (VSE), you recall this ethanol producer went public on Wednesday at a price of $23. Well, the chart looks a little funny because it`s only a week old, but you can see profit takers have been moving in steadily after Wednesday. It got as high as $30.75.
Polo Ralph Lauren (RL) a $2.30 gain there. The company reportedly is in talks to sell an exclusive line of its merchandise through JC Penney. Buckingham research brokerage upgraded the stock from "buy" to a "strong buy."
Microsoft (MSFT) topped the active list rising $0.03. Microsoft said its developing a competing iPod type product just like Apple Computer.
Google (GOOG) in there with a $0.30 loss.
And Apple Computer (AAPL) on the Microsoft news, down $1.82.
Oracle (ORCL) a $0.49 gainer.
Intel (INTC) $0.18 rise there. That was fifth in dollar volume. Qualcomm (QCOM) fell $0.94.
Dell (DELL) $0.79 loss.
Adobe Systems (ADBE) bucked the overall trend with a $0.16 gain.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) a $0.24 drop.
And tenth in volume was Amgen (AMGN) losing $0.62 a share.
California Micro Devices (CAMD) down $1.47. That`s 25 percent of its value. The company cut its first quarter revenue estimate by $2 million, down to about $15 to $16 million and the Unterberg brokerage downgraded the stock from "buy" to just a "market perform" rating.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
