Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Thursday, July 12, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: Those better than expected retail sales gave investors on Wall Street confidence that the economy still had plenty of spunk and of course Rio Tinto's premium bid for Alcan suggested stocks were still attractive to some of the big money. The result was a rollicking rally which pushed the Dow up nearly 200 points at mid-session while the NASDAQ was up 30 points. Aggressive buyers continued to jump on the bullish bandwagon right on to the final bell today, producing a host of record highs. The Dow Industrial Average closed up 2083.86 points at a record high of 13,861.73. The NASDAQ Composite soared 49.94 to 2701.73. Standard & Poor's 500 Index vaulted 28.94 points to a record high of 1547.70. Over in the bond market, the 10- year note fell 10/32 to 95 6/32, putting the yield at 5.13 percent.
Big board volume leader on 20.1 million shares, Alcoa (AA) rising $2.86. As you heard, Rio Tinto has apparently won the battle to acquire Alcon, Alcan I should say. Alcoa of course may be a target itself of a takeover. Anyway, the company said, after it's withdrawn a buyout bid from Alcan and used the funds to buy back some of its stock. Alcan incidentally was up $8.85 at $98.45. Rio Tinto's buyout bid worth $101 a share, well above Alcoa's $76 a share bid. Rio Tinto stock fell $6.71 to $317.71 today. GE (GE) moved up $0.80.
EMC Corp (EMC) $0.33 gain.
Ford Motor (F) rose $0.06.
Pfizer (PFE) $0.53 advance in that stock.
Motorola (MOT) was up $0.13. Its CEO is under pressure to step down. The company said it may have second quarter results, second quarter loss and those results are due out a week from today.
Target Corp (TGT) moved up $4.44. June same store sales up 3.3 percent. July same store sales it's said will be up 5 to 7 percent. Late today reportedly an activist investor said he owns 5 percent of Target's stock.
Citigroup (C) was up $1.43, helping the Dow.
Micron Tech (MU) a $0.10 drop.
And then Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) moving up $1.15. Its June same store sales were up 2.4 percent. The Street thought less than 1 percent gain.
Let's have a look at some other retail stocks. BJ's Wholesale (BJ) up $2.58. The same store sales in June up 5.3 percent there. That was 2 percent better than the Street was expecting.
JC Penney (JCP) was up $4.30 and it had same store sales up 1.5 percent.
And Macy's (M) dropped 2.7 percent.
Elsewhere, Huntsman (HUN) off $1.18. Hexion (ph) Chemical, a unit of Apollo Management, will acquire it for $28 a share cash. That's better than Basel's (ph) $25.25 per share offer.
Then we see Texas Industries (TXI) up $5.37. The materials and construction company had fourth quarter earnings of $1.09, down from $1.58 last year, but that was just a penny shy of expectations.
Marriott Intl (MAR) down $1.31. Second quarter earnings higher, $0.51 versus $0.43 last year, but the company cut its full year revenue growth guidance and that's what hurt the stock.
Commscope (CTV) a $5.11 gain. Morgan Keegan brokerage upgraded it from "market perform" to "out perform."
Then the big loser of the day, PFF Bancorp (PFB) down $4.78. The company expects to have a second quarter loan loss provision of $20 to $21 million.
These are some of the better gainers in the Dow average. The combined gains of these five stocks accounted for 80 points in the Dow's overall gain incidentally.
American Express (AXP)
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
Honeywell Intl (HON)
JPMorgan Chase (JPM)
Merck & Co (MRK)
Intel (INTC) topped the active list on NASDAQ, up $1.43. Bank America boosted second quarter earnings estimates and set a $29 a share target for the stock.
Apple (AAPL) up $1.68.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) up $1.04.
And then Google (GOOG) gained $0.86.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.58 rise there.
Research in Motion (RIMM) up $4.40.
Followed by Dell (DELL) up $0.46.
Qualcomm (QCOM) was up $1.41.
Amazon.com (AMZN) did well, up $2.06 after Bank America says second quarter earnings from Amazon will exceed Wall Street estimates.
And then came Oracle (ORCL) with a gain of $0.52 a share.
Sandisk (SNDK) up $2.78. Analysts' positive on strong flash memory chip prices which should help the bottom line on Sandisk Corp.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
