Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: The tech sector led Wall Street higher this morning on Cisco's better than expected results and outlook. By 11:00 a.m., the Dow was up 105 points and the NASDAQ rose 49. After a mid-day fade, stocks came on strong again, led by the home builders. The Dow posted a 173-point gain at 2:30, but then plummeted to a five-point loss an hour later. That was on a rumor that Goldman Sachs would make a major announcement, possibly about one of its hedge funds. Goldman denied that rumor and stocks snapped right back to close sharply higher. The Dow Industrial Average jumped 153.5 points to end the day at 13,657.86. The NASDAQ Composite gained 51.38 ending at 2,612.98. Standard & Poor's 500 rose 20.78 points to 1,497.49. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 24/32 to 97 2/32, lifting the yield to 4.88 percent.
Big board volume leader on 29.5 million shares, Ford Motor Co (F) moving up $0.57. The company is forecasting it will have a profit in year 2009.
Then General Electric (GE) with a $0.98 gain.
Pfizer (PFE) moved up $0.55.
Citigroup (C) gained $0.90.
And Time Warner (TWX) $0.37 advance there.
Motorola (MOT) gained $0.64.
Bank of America (BAC) in that firm section, up $1.03.
ExxonMobil (XOM) rose $2.20.
Countrywide Financial (CFC) up $1.76. Standard & Poor's upgraded it from "strong sell" to "sell," not sure what that means.
EMC Corp (EMC) up $0.25 and that was number 10 in big board volume.
Then a new issue came to market today, E House China Holdings Ltd (EJ). This is a Chinese real estate services company. It was an IPO of 14.6 million American depository shares priced at $13.80, opened at $18.12, the high of the day, $21.35. They had a pretty good debut I'd say.
General Motors (GM) moved up $1.34 despite all those lower forecasts for auto sales. The story here, a Russian investor bought a stake of just below 5 percent in GM stock.
McDonald's (MCD) moved up $0.56, another Dow stock in the plus column. July same store sales for McDonald's were up 6 1/2 percent.
Then Goldman Sachs Group (GS) up $2.05 on the close, traded as low as $188.76 and the high just about 198. The company did deny as I touched on earlier, speculation it would make a major announcement, possibly about one of its hedge firms, didn't happen.
Then Toll Brothers (TOL) up $1.38. The company said preliminary July quarter sales were down 21 percent. That was better than expected and they were up 3 percent from the April quarter. Well, that set off a little rally in the home building stocks. Let's have a look at some of them.
Beazer Homes (BZH), Centex (CTX), Hovnanian Enterprises (HOV), Lennar (LEN) and Ryland Group (RYL) all nice gains.
Fluor (FLR), the big construction firm, up $2.77. Second quarter earnings rose to $1.05 from $0.74 a year ago and sales up 22 percent, nice move there.
Anthracite Capital (AHR) was up $2.02. Second quarter earnings out, $0.34, up from last year's $0.29 and the company affirmed it is not invested in any sub-prime or alt A (ph) mortgage market securities.
American Vanguard (AVD), a chemical company, up $2.17. Soleil Securities started coverage with a "buy" recommendation today.
Then a major casualty, Miller Industries (MLR) which makes those car carriers and other types of trailers, second quarter earnings fell to $0.42 from $0.48 last year.
And finally the gun maker, Sturm Ruger & Co (RGR) plunging $5.54 on news that a company officer sold 12,000 shares at $21.54 yesterday.
Topping NASDAQ's active list. Cisco Systems (CSCO) up $1.99 on those better than expected earnings that we told you about yesterday and the company's upbeat outlook helped too.
Apple (AAPL) down $1.02.
Google (GOOG) up $9.76. The company received antitrust approval to go ahead with its acquisition of Postini (ph), an online securities provider.
Intel (INTC) $0.55 gain there.
Qualcomm (QCOM) down $0.35.
Microsoft (MSFT) a $0.45 gain.
Research in Motion (RIMM) moved up $3.79.
Comcast (CMCSA) $0.16 drop.
Broadcom (BRCM) up $3.22 on word that the company will supply more of its microchips to Nokia.
And Foster Wheeler (FWLT), gained $6.25 after reporting second quarter of $0.99. That was down from $1.53 a year ago. (CORRECTION: Foster Wheeler's stock actually fell $6.25 on Wednesday.)
