Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Thursday, June 07, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened on a mixed note, but sellers soon took a strong upper hand on that rise in bond yields and the surge in oil prices. At noon, the Dow posted an 80-point loss and the NASDAQ was off 19. An early afternoon recovery attempt was wiped out after those comments from Pimco's Bill Gross as Erika Miller reported. Gross see strong global economic growth lifting the yield on the 10-year to as high as 6 1/2 percent. For stocks it was all downhill from there. The Dow Industrial Average tumbled to a closing loss of 198.94 points at 13,266.73. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 45.80 to 25.41.38 and the Standard& Poor's 500 down 26.66 at 1,490.72. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note tumbled 1 9/32 to 95 3/32, lifting the yield all the way up to 5.14 percent.
For the third straight session, Pfizer (PFE) topped the active list on the big board today, trading 24.7 million shares and down $0.50.
Followed by General Electric (GE) in the weak Dow, off $0.53.
AT&T (T) was off $0.86. The higher bond yields are giving good paying stocks like AT&T competition.
And then ExxonMobil (XOM), one of the bigger losers in the Dow today.
Let's have some other Dow stocks and get an idea how bad the selling was. Altria Group (MO), Boeing Co (BA), Caterpillar (CAT), 3M Co (MMM) and Procter & Gamble (PG) down $0.87. Lehman Brothers downgraded Procter from "over weight" to "equal weight" in the belief there's not much upside potential in revenue growth for Procter & Gamble in the year 2008.
Then we see EMC Corp (EMC) a $0.50 loss and that was fifth in big board volume.
Time Warner (TWX) down $0.32.
$0.20 loss in Ford Motor Co (F).
Motorola (MOT) fell $0.44.
Avaya (AV) a $0.02 loss.
And then topping out this blizzard of minus signs, Citigroup (C) with an $0.81 drop there.
On the upside, CVS Caremark (CVS) gained $0.32. The company received a three-year contract for retailer pharmacy benefit and clinical services for the Blue Cross/Blue Shield for employee - that's Federal employee program.
And incidentally, along with that, Medco Health Solutions (MHS) gained $1.15. This company received a mail order and specialty pharmacy services portion of that Federal employee contract I just mentioned.
Meritage Homes (MTH) down $1.85. The company's April May sales tumbled 21 percent from a year ago. That had a negative impact on the housing sector. Let's have a look at some majors there.
Beazer Homes (BZH), Centex (CTX), Lennar (LEN) and Pulte Homes (PHM) all down substantially.
Saks (SKS) moved up $1.10. May same store sales were up 37 1/2 percent, but they were boosted by a promotional calendar change for Memorial Day and that could result in a sales decline in the month of June.
JC Penney Co (JCP) fell $3.40. May same store sales dropped 2 percent. The Street was expecting a rise about .3 of a percent, so a disappointment there.
Dyncorp Intl (DCP) up $3.84. This company provides technical services to government agencies. Fourth quarter earnings jumped to $0.33 from $0.18 a year ago. That's a nickel above the Street estimate and Dyncorp will also buy back up to $10 million of its own stock.
Quest Diagnostics (DGX) up $2.28. UBS financial upgraded it from "neutral" to "buy."
Then on the downside Volt Information Sciences (VOL), it provides staffing services. Second quarter earnings $0.28. The Street was expecting $0.41 and sales actually fell 4.3 percent in the period.
Greif (GEF), which is in the industrial packaging business, also had lower earnings second quarter, $0.32, well down from $0.49 a year ago.
Apple (AAPL) topped the active list on NASDAQ on that record closing high. UBS boosted its price target to $160 a share and Piper Jaffray did the same and Piper's top analyst Gene Munster says the company could sell 45 million iPhones in the year 2009.
Google (GOOG) $3.19 loss.
Microsoft (MSFT) losing $0.67.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) down $0.75.
Amazon.com (AMZN)
dropped $0.25. There's speculation Amazon might make a buyout bid for Netflix and that stock moved up $1.33.
Research in Motion (RIMM) $0.75 drop.
Intel (INTC) losing $0.18.
Qualcomm (QCOM) down $1.21.
Yahoo! (YHOO) fell $0.46.
And Comcast A (CSCSA) losing $0.61 a share.
Finally we had a new issue today that braved this sell off, Infinera (INFN) I believe it's pronounced. It's a manufacturer of telecom chips, 14 million shares offered at 13. Opened at $16.04, got a high of $21.24 today and backed off a little bit still a nice debut.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
