Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Monday, January 07, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: On Wall Street, stocks opened higher in a technical rebound from last week's battering. A drop in oil futures also helped the Dow jump 80 points at the outset of trading, with the NASDAQ Index up 12 points. The market turned lower by late morning on word there had been a confrontation between Iranian boats and U.S. naval ships on Sunday, but bargain hunters absorbed the selling and by 1:00 p.m. the Dow was up 68 points. With weakness in commodity and tech stocks and strength in the drug sector, the market went on to close mixed. The Dow Industrial Average ended up 27.31 points at 12,827.49, but the NASDAQ lost 5.19 ending at 2499.46. Standard & Poor's 500 rose 4.55, ending at 1416.18. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note rose 10/32 to 103 11/32, putting the yield down to 3.84 percent.
Familiar name at the top of the big board active list, Citigroup (C) moving up $0.02 on 25.6 million shares.
Followed by EMC Corp (EMC) $0.95 loss there.
Pfizer (PFE) in that sturdy and firm drug group, up $0.40.
Ford Motor Co (F) edged up $0.03.
And then General Electric (GE) with a $0.14 gain.
AT&T (T) moved up $0.54.
And then Bank of America (BAC) a nickel gainer.
ExxonMobil (XOM) in the lower oil futures, off $0.86.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) down $1.52. That's in sympathy with weakness in IBM and we'll see why in just a moment.
Co Vale do Rio (RIO) a $0.23 loss.
And then IBM (IBM) down $1.08. What happened here is that UBS downgraded it from "buy" to "neutral" on concern about the slowing economy and that affected a lot of the high tech stocks today.
Alcoa (AA) down $1.76. Credit Suisse cut its fourth quarter earnings estimates and those earnings due out Wednesday by the way. Credit Suisse cut the fourth quarter from $0.65 to only $0.38 and 2007 earnings estimate from $2.75 down to $2.48 a share. The company cited lower aluminum prices, adverse currency movements and the higher nat gas prices.
Boeing (BA) down $2.95. Deutsche Bank made some cautious comments about the likelihood of a slowdown in aircraft orders for 2008.
McDonald's (MCD) a $0.98 gain. "Wall Street Journal" reported that it's going to put coffee bars in 14,000 of its U.S. stores to compete with Starbucks. You heard the news earlier on Starbucks with management changes.
SLM Corp (SLM) Sallie Mae, up $1.16, even though Standard & Poor's downgraded it from "buy" to "hold" on concerns about declining profit margins, but the company named a new chairman and a new CFO and the stock responded positively to that new management team apparently.
Emergent Biosolutions (EBS), look at that gain, almost 39 percent, up $1.94. The company boosted its 2007 and 2008 earnings and revenue outlook, a good day for that stock.
And a good day for Zale (ZLC) up $1.47. Activist investor Richard Breeden (ph), former SEC chairman incidentally, boosted his stake in Zale from 15.1 to 15.9 percent.
Then Jefferies Group (JEF), the big brokerage, down $1.12. The company predicting a fourth quarter loss of around $24 million. That works out to minus $0.17 a share. The Street was looking for earnings of about $0.33 a share.
Best Buy Co (BBY) down $0.47. Bear Stearns downgraded it from "out perform" to "under perform" citing the slowdown in the U.S. economy.
But a good gain in Eli Lilly (LLY) leading that tech - the drug sector higher, up $2.75 a share. Morgan Stanley upgraded it from "under weight" to "equal weight" and investors in general moving into safe haven drug stocks today.
They also moved in to Cascade (CAE) up $4.27. The DA Davidson brokerage upgraded it from "neutral" to "buy."
Apple (AAPL) topped NASDAQ's active list, down $2.41.
And Google (GOOG) a $7.75 loss.
Research in Motion (RIMM) fell $3.52.
Microsoft (MSFT) edging up $0.23. Microsoft said in the past year it sold 100 million licenses for its Vista operating system.
Baidu.com (BIDU) down over $16.50 a share.
Intel (INTC) $0.21 gainer.
First Solar (FSLR) down $8.74.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) a penny gain.
Dell (DELL) down $0.83 in the weak high tech group.
Then Qualcomm (QCOM) $0.58 loss there.
Pharmasset (VRUS), look at that gain, up $6.25. The company's early trials for its hepatitis C treatment are showing promise and the stock really reacted positively.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
