Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News
Friday, July 07, 2006
|
|
|
|
PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened with steep losses amid concerns that excessive rate hikes by the Fed caused that weak jobs report. Not helping things either, the strong wage component in the report raised inflation fears. An earnings warning from 3M was another negative. So the Dow fell 95 points at the outset of trading. NASDAQ lost 15. The convergence of all these worries and normal pre-weekend caution sent the markets steadily lower the rest of the day. The Dow Industrial Average closed off 134.63 points at 11,090.67. In this four-day trading week, it rose twice, fell twice, had a net loss of 59.55 points. The NASDAQ Composite tumbled 25.03 to 2130.06 today. It also rose twice and fell twice this week for an overall loss of 42.03 points. Standard & Poor`s 500 Index dropped 8.60 to 1265.48 today. In the bond market, the 10-year note rose 13/32 to 99 30/32, putting the yield at 5.13 percent.
Most active big board issue on 15 1/2 million shares, EMC Corp (EMC) moving up $0.11.
Then Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) down $0.27. AMD says its second quarter sales will be about 9 percent below the first quarter level. Nevertheless, Goldman Sachs brokerage still repeated a "strong buy" on ADM (sic).
3M (MMM), the major casualty of the day, down $7.29 and that loss accounted for almost 58 points of the Dow`s loss. The company said higher start up costs for its optical film`s business and lower sales of LCDs will hurt second quarter earnings. Standard & Poor`s cut its 2006 earnings estimate by $0.10 a share, down to $4.55 a share and also cut its price target for 3M from $90 down to $83 a share.
Radioshack (RSH) on the other hand moving up $3.20. The company had named turnaround specialist Julian Day as chairman and CEO. Day was with Kmart and helped that turnaround. Raymond James incidentally, upgraded Radioshack from "market perform" to "out perform."
Altria Group (MO) up another $0.04 after a big gain yesterday on a positive court ruling. Lucent Tech (LU) lost $0.02.
$0.29 drop in Motorola (MOT).
ExxonMobil (XOM) losing $0.65.
Corning (GLW) off $1.09. That`s in sympathy with 3M and lower than expected LCD sales.
General Electric (GE) down $0.20, tenth in volume.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) down $0.25 although the company plans to shrink its real estate portfolio in order to cut workplace service costs.
Then we see Lowe Companies (LOW) down $1.32. Keep in mind that this is the two for one split stock. That split effective June 30th. AG Edwards today downgraded the stock though from "buy" to "hold" on concerns about slower housing activity.
Then Amerus Group (AMH) was up $4.39. It`s an insurance holding company. It confirmed it is in talks to be acquired by the British firm Aviva.
Labranche & Co (LAB) down $3.02, huge percentage drop. The company`s forecasting a second quarter net loss of about $23 million due to a drop in principle trading revenue. It`ll drop from $47 million a year ago to only $20 million in this year`s second quarter.
Parker-Hannifin (PH) a $0.71 gain. Citigroup upgraded "hold" to "buy" on the belief the company will beat fourth quarter Wall Street earnings estimates.
And Qwest Communications (Q) down $0.38. Goldman Sachs downgraded it from "neutral" to a "sell."
Google (GOOG) topped the NASDAQ actives, down $2.74.
Apple Computer (AAPL) a $0.37 loss.
Microsoft (MSFT) off $0.18.
Intel (INTC) $0.29 drop there.
Oracle (ORCL) finally a gainer, bucking the trend, up $0.28, fifth in volume. Ebay (EBAY) was down $0.23.
Hansen Natural (HANS) a $0.13 gain.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.24 loss.
Broadcom (BRCM) fell $1.38.
And Starbucks (SBUX) down $1.84. After the close yesterday, the company reported June same store sales were up 6 percent. Wall Street was expecting at least 7 percent. And today UBS securities downgraded it from "buy" to "neutral."
PMC-Sierra (PMCS) down $1.17. CFO leaving and that was a negative.
And finally on the American exchange, Radiologix (RGX) up $0.87, big percentage gain. It`s going to be acquired by Primedex for $1.84 in cash plus one share on Primedex stock. The deal worth $3.71 a share.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
