Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
|
|
|
|
PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened on the defensive because of those higher oil prices and of course that surprisingly big jump in wholesale prices. The Dow fell 30 points at the outset of trading and the NASDAQ lost 20 points. Impressed by the market's rather modest sell off on that worrisome inflation news, buyers stepped forward and stabilized prices. And then in the final hour, the pickup in traditional year-end demand boosted the blue chips to new record highs. So the Dow Industrial Average closed up 30.05 points at a record 12,471.32. The NASDAQ Composite lost 6.02 dropping to 2429.55. Standard & Poor's 500 was up 3.07, ending at 1425.55. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 2/32 to par and 8/32, putting the yield at 4.59 percent.
Big board volume leader on 28.8 million shares, Ford Motor Co (F) moving up $0.15. Morgan Stanley this morning upgraded it from "equal weight" to "over weight," largely because of the company's new ample liquidity.
Pfizer (PFE) up $0.37. The company's boosting its quarterly dividend by 21 percent. It'll go from $0.24 to $0.29 quarterly.
Then the major casualty of the day, Circuit City Stores (CC) down $4.04, traded as low as $18.25 on that $0.09 third quarter loss.
Citigroup (C) down $0.21. It was up $1.37 yesterday on a Merrill Lynch upgrade from "neutral" to "buy," a little profit taking there.
General Electric (GE), fifth in volume, edged a penny higher.
Then we see AT&T (T) down $0.48. Yesterday FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said he will not vote to break the agency's impasse over AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth and this could delay the decision further.
ExxonMobil (XOM) up $1.48, a strong oil sector today.
Texas Instruments (TXN) lost $0.76.
Time Warner (TWX) $0.19 gain.
And Terex (TEX) up $1.67. After the close today, the stock was added to the Standard & Poor's 500. The stock jumped nearly $6 in anticipation of that yesterday.
Morgan Stanley (MS) up $1.33. Fourth quarter operating earnings came in at $2.08 a share. That's up from last year's $1.64 and $0.31 above the Street consensus and the company also said it's spinning off its Discovery credit card business.
Astrazeneca (AZN), the big drug company, down $1.92. The European patent office withdrew a key patent for the company's best-selling heartburn treatment called Nexium.
And then Best Buy Co (BBY) down in sympathy with Circuit City and that loss that they encountered in the third quarter, off $0.79, traded as low as $46.95 incidentally.
Then we see Valassis Communications (VCI) up $0.62. The company and Advo have settled their litigation out of court. Valassis will now acquire Advo for $33 a share and that's down from the initial offer of $37 a share.
Unitedhealth Group (UNH) up $1. (AUDIO GAP) forecasting 2007 revenues at $79.5 billion, well above the Street estimate of $77.9 billion.
Factset Research (FDS) up $1.99, big first quarter earnings, $0.47, up from $0.38 and a penny above the Street estimate. Revenues up a respectable 21 percent.
Then a new issue, Trina Solar Ltd (TSL), this is a Chinese manufacturer off solar-powered products, 5.3 million American depository shares offered at $18.50, had a pretty good first day of trading.
And then Harrah's Entertainment (HET) up $1.34. That's in after hours trading. The company as agreed to be acquired by Texas Pacific and Apollo Management and the price, $90 a share.
NASDAQ's most active, Google (GOOG) rebounding $5.83 after tumbling $17.50 yesterday.
Apple Computer (AAPL) an $0.84 gain.
Oracle (ORCL) down $0.81. After the close yesterday, it came in with second quarter earnings of $0.32 a share. That was in line with Street estimates, but sales were lower than expected.
Microsoft (MSFT) a $0.10 gain.
Research in Motion (RIMM) down $3.27, fifth in dollar volume.
Then another new issue, Melco PBL ADR (MPEL), this is a Macau-based casino operator, 60 1/4 million American depository shares offered at $19 each and it had a pretty good first day of trading.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.02 gain there.
Intel (INTC) $0.18 loss.
eBay (EBAY) moved down $0.29.
Tenth in volume was Qualcomm (QCOM) with a $0.58 loss.
Escala Group (ESCL) up $4.12, look at that percentage gain, almost 92 percent. This is a stamp and coin auctioneering company and the news is, an internal investigation found no evidence that the company tried to defraud its biggest shareholder and up went the stock.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
