Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Monday, February 11, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street's blue chips extended last week's losses early today as AIG stock dropped sharply on reports the firm may have more big write downs. The market was also undermined by a sharp rise in oil prices which we'll detail shortly. An hour into trading, the Dow was off about 100 points while the NASDAQ was down only seven points. That resilient NASDAQ market spearheaded a solid afternoon bargain-hunting rally, which lasted right up into the closing bell. The Dow Industrial Average closed up 57.88 points at 12,240.01. The NASDAQ Composite was up 15.21 ending at 2320.06, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 7.84 to 1339.13. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note climbed 8/32 to 99 putting the yield at 3.62 percent.
New York exchange volume leader on 24.3 million shares, American Intl Group (AIG) the big insurance company, down almost $6 and that cost the Dow Industrial Average 48 1/2 points. Then came of course the problem is the independent auditor said the company has material weakness in its internal controls to determine the fair value of its CDO portfolio.
Then came Citigroup (C) down $0.22 a share.
Followed by Ford Motor Co (F) up $0.31.
General Electric (GE) $0.17 gain.
Bank of America (BAC) a $0.02 drop. That was number five in volume, being added of course as you heard to the Dow Industrials on February 19th.
AT&T (T) was up $0.50.
But Pfizer (PFE) dropped a dime.
EMC Corp (EMC) $0.17 gain.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) fell $0.47.
And then came Motorola (MOT) with a gain of $0.31. Motorola's in talks about a joint venture with Nortel incidentally.
ExxonMobil (XOM) up $1.51. As you heard, New York oil up about $1.82 a barrel on these increasing tensions with Venezuela.
General Motors (GM) up $1.32. Fourth quarter results are due out tomorrow for GM and a JPMorgan analyst said the auto business may show an upside surprise.
Loews Corp (LTR), this is the other Loews that owns tobacco, Lorillard and so forth, offshore drilling, down $3.73. Fourth quarter earnings excluding items, $0.86 and that was $0.26 below Street estimates.
Incidentally, Loews owns 89 percent of CNA Financial (CNA) and that stock down $6.16. CNA had 50 decline in fourth quarter earnings to $0.60, down from $1.22 a year ago on insurance premium shortfalls.
PNM Resources (PNM) a $4.73 drop. The energy holding company had sharply lower fourth quarter earnings $0.23, down from $0.48 a year ago on a 12 percent drop in revenues.
And Cnooc Ltd ADR (CEO) down $5.34, that's right. Deutsche Bank downgraded the oil and gas company from "buy" to just a "hold" rating.
Brown & Brown (BRO) insurance firm down $3.57. Fourth quarter earnings, $0.23, down from $0.27 a year ago and a 1.2 percent increase in revenues. Piper Jaffray brokerage downgraded Brown & Brown from "buy" to just a "neutral."
And then Carlisle Cos (CRL) up $4.45. The company's in construction materials and things like that. Fourth quarter operating earnings rose to $0.66 from $0.61 a year ago. Standard & Poor's repeated a "strong buy."
And Compass Minerals (CMP) up $3.35, a big producer of rock salt incidentally and it's boosting its quarterly dividend 5 percent to $0.33.5 per share.
Darden Restaurants (DRI) had a good day, up $2.15. The company sees third quarter operating earnings at $0.78 to $0.80 a share. RBC Capital brokerage starts coverage with an "out perform" rating and a $40 a share target.
Hypercom (HYC) up $1.17. A French company called Ingenico is offering $6.25 a share for all the outstanding shares of Hypercom.
Apple (AAPL) topped the active list on NASDAQ, up $3.97. Citigroup named it to its top pick list and repeated a "buy."
Microsoft (MSFT) down $0.35. You heard the news there.
Google (GOOG) up $4.47.
Research in Motion (RIMM) up $4.76 in regular way (ph) trading, but after the close, it was revealed the company's Blackberry smart phones had a critical outage today. In after hours trading, RIMM stock was down about $1 from this price.
Yahoo! (YHOO) down or up $0.67 despite rejecting the Microsoft buyout bid.
Baidu.com (BIDU) $12.80 gain.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) a $0.02 loss.
First Solar (FSLR) up $16.45.
Intel (INTC) a $0.41 gain.
And then came Oracle (ORCL) with a $0.25 advance in its stock.
Elsewhere, Possis Medical (POSS) up $5.01. A unit of Bayer AG, the big German firm, will acquire it for $19.50 a share in cash.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
