Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Monday, December 31, 2007
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JEFF YASTINE: The Dow dropped about 120 points in the first two hours of trading. Buyers were positioning themselves for 2008. Some buyers with “dogs of the Dow” stocks like Citigroup and Home Depot saw some buying. That wasn’t enough to outweigh profit taking on many of the index’s best performers this year like McDonalds. Afternoon bells helped take the indexes off their lows. But they renamed stocks and fell sharply through the rest of the session. So the Dow dropping at 101. 05 to close at 13264.82. And the NASDAQ fell at 22.18 to close at 2652.28, and the S&P 500 losing 10.13 to end at 1468.36. And on the bond market the 10 year note gaining 12/32nd’s to 101 and 25/32 and putting the yield at 4.03%.
Citigroup tops our list tonight gaining 15 cents with 19.7 million shares changing hands, and those shares set a new intra day low for the year before rebounding along with the rest of the financial sector.
Pfizer (PFE) dropped $ .17
GE (GE) losing $.27
And there’ s Bank of America (BAC) up $.16
Washington Mutual (WM) another financial gaining a little over half a dollar.
Synovus (SNV) also up for the day gaining $.30
And SLM (SLM) Sallie Mae up nearly half a dollar.
Ford (F) up $.03. The company denying market rumors it plans to transfer its 49% stake in Ford Malaysia to another partner Sime Darby.
AT&T (T) down nearly $.90.
And Home Depot (HD) gaining $.26, a dog of a Dow buy as I mentioned earlier today.
Big movers here IBM (IBM) falling $1.99. Published reports say big blue is in talks to buy an Israeli storage technology firm for $300M to $350M but that’s not helping the stock today.
Legg Mason (LM) rising $1.92. The company moved Friday to cut its SIB exposure to 3.2% liquidity and today Bank of America cut its price target on the shares by about $10.00 and kept a buy rating on the stock.
Merrill Lynch (MER) rising $.71. Merrill leading Wall Street for underwriting fees in 2007. Also they closed a $1.25 billion sale of its insurance unit to Aegon today although that is a discount on the original deal.
Temple-Inland (TIN) rising over $3.00 or 18%. The firm completing its spinoff to share holders Guaranty Financial and Forestar Real Estate Group.
M/I Homes (MHO) this is a builder of single family homes adding about 4% today. The company selling today about 1/5 of its properties for $82M in an attempt to reduce debt. Most of that land was in Florida.
Centerline Holdings Co. (CHC) closing of just $.08 but had been sharply lower earlier. On Friday slashing its annual dividend from $1.68 a share to just $.60 a share also cutting its outlook for the fourth quarter.
On the NASDAQ mostly red here today. Apple (AAPL) dropping $1.75.
Research in Motion (RIMM) also down more than $3.50
Cisco (CSCO) off nearly $.50
Google ( GOOG) dropping more than $11.00
Baidu,com (BIDU) losing more than $9.00. Its Chief Financial Officer Sean Wang died in an accident while on vacation in China but J.P. Morgan says the CFO’s suddenly death won’t likely have an impact on the business of China’s top search engine.
Microsoft (MSFT) was down for the day.
So was Intel (INTC) off $.10.
First Solar (FSLR) a gainer of $1.10.
Amazon.com (AMZN) off $1.81.
Oracle (ORCL) losing $.39.
LJ International (JADE) shares rising 225. The jewel maker says its earnings per share in the first half of fiscal 2007 nearly doubled and had a 34% jump in revenues.
Delta Petroleum (DPTR) rising 334. Kirk Kerkorian’s investment firm Tracinda Corp is taking a 35% stake there. Delta says they’ll use that money $684M to accelerate development of drilling activities in core areas.
And finally Transmeridian Exploration (TMY) rising $.59. The oil exploration firm being taken private by chairman LORI OLIVER and he’s offering to buy all of the company’s outstanding stock at $3.00 a share. Oliver’s buyout vehicle is called Transmeridian International.
And those are the stocks tonight.
