Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Thursday, December 27, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: On Wall Street, the Bhutto assassination and the related surge in oil and gold prices sent stocks broadly lower at the opening. The market was already vulnerable to selling after four straight higher sessions. So the Dow steadily declined nearly 160 points by 1:00 p.m. with the NASDAQ off 32 points. Smaller than expected increases in November durable goods orders and December consumer confidence kept stocks hostage to the recession worries. So the major averages ended at near their lows of the day. The Dow Industrial Average closed off 192.08 at 13,359.61. The NASDAQ Composite tumbled 47.62 points, ending at 2676.79, while the Standard & Poor`s 500 Index fell 21.39 at 1476.27. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note gained 20/32 to par and 12/32, putting the yield at 4.20 percent.
New York exchange volume leader trading 20 million shares, Citigroup (C) moving down $0.89. Goldman Sachs sees Citigroup boosting its sub-prime write off estimate all the way up to $18 billion from the $8 to $11 billion that it forecast in November. And Goldman Sachs also says Citigroup could well cut its dividend by up to 40 percent.
Then came SLM Corp (SLM), Sallie Mae, that was down $2.48, the low of the day incidentally. After the close yesterday as we reported, SLM said it plans to offer $2.5 billion in stock and convertible debt, looks like it`ll be about 70 million shares of common stock along with $1 billion in convertible bonds.
Pfizer (PFE) a $0.28 drop there.
And then General Electric (GE) lost $0.36.
Ford Motor Co (F) a nickel loss, fifth in volume on the big board.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) fell $1.30. Goldman Sachs was talking about a lot of the big investment banks and this is one also. Goldman Sachs now sees JPMorgan Chase with a sub-prime write off at least $3.4 billion, up from the previous estimate of $1.7 billion.
Bank of America (BAC) was down $0.84.
Washington Mutual (WM) $0.44 drop there.
Coeur d`Alene (CDE), the gold and silver mining company, down $0.12.
AT&T (T) was up $0.28.
Merrill Lynch (MER) down $1.34. You guessed it, Goldman Sachs boosted Merrill Lynch`s write off estimate from $6 billion to $11.5 billion, rough day for the investment bank.
Boeing (BA) lost $1.12, even though the company finalized orders for 24 of its 787 Dreamliners from British Air. That order is worth about $4.4 billion.
Then we see China Telecom (CHA) moving up $3.04. That whole Chinese telecom group was strong after the Chinese government approved of a plan for a new generation broadband wireless network.
Then we see two of the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) both on the plus side. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, OFHEO as they call it, said today that these two enterprises were adequately capitalized as of September 30th.
Heico (HEI), which is an aerospace component, down $3.50. That simple profit taking on a sharp recent rise on good earnings, but also Heico`s chairman and one of the corporate directors sold 100,000 shares of stock last week, a little insider selling news there.
Apple (AAPL) down $0.38, led the active list.
Baidu.com (BIDU) moving up $9.53.
Google (GOOG) down $10.10.
Research in Motion (RIMM) fell $1.58.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.59 drop there.
Microsoft (MSFT) lost $0.64.
Followed by Intel (INTC) a $0.62 drop.
Oracle (ORCL) bucked the trend with a $0.04 gain.
And First Solar (FLSR) down $5.41.
Amazon.com (AMZN) was up $1.40. The company`s in a pact with Warner Music to sell downloadable music on various digital music players.
Elsewhere on NASDAQ, American Dental (ADPI) jumping $4.68. The company reached a lawsuit settlement with a dental group called PDG for a smaller than expected amount.
And then Document Science (DOCX) up $6.25. EMC Corp. will acquire this company for $14.75 in cash. And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
