Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Monday, June 30, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: After last week's drubbing, Wall Street's hopes for a technical rebound this morning were thwarted by an early spike in oil futures to the $143 a barrel level. The Dow fell 25 points at the outset of trading while the NASDAQ lost eight points. Stocks improved as bargain hunters were emboldened by an easing in oil futures and a better than expected report on business activity from the Chicago area. By noon the Dow posted a 90-point gain, but most of that evaporated this afternoon on low volume and tech sector weakness. The Dow Industrial Average closed up only 3.50 points at 11,350.01. The NASDAQ lost 22.65 ending at 2292.98. Standard & Poor's 500 rose 1.62 at 1280 even. In the bond market, the 10- year note ended the day unchanged at 99 8/32 with a yield at 3.97 percent.
Now let's take a look at our stocks in the news tonight.
New York exchange volume leader on 35.1 million shares, Citigroup (C) losing $0.49.
Followed by Bank of America (BAC) down $0.72, that sector still weak.
General Electric (GE) bucked the trend, up $0.43.
Wachovia (WB) down $0.69. The "New York Post" reports Wachovia could be forced to buy back Prudential Financial's 23 percent stake in their joint brokerage venture which is valued at about $5 billion.
Countrywide Financial (CFC) down $0.17. It came out of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index today.
Ford Motor Co (F) a $0.17 loss. Sales figures due tomorrow.
Pfizer (PFE) up $0.19.
AK Steel Holdings (AKS) up $0.79. It was added to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index today.
Washington Mutual (WM) up $0.13.
And JPMorgan Chase (JPM) was down $0.74, tenth in volume.
Fortune Brands (FO) closed with a $0.04 gain. After the close however, the company cut its second quarter earnings outlook and full year as well due to the slow economy. In after hours trading, the stock fell to just below $60 a share.
Fannie Mae (FNM) losing $1.29. The company will be selling $3 billion in three month benchmark bills on Wednesday and it will sell $2 billion in six month bills on Wednesday as well. Those would be Dutch auctions.
Sprint Nextel (S) up $0.59. "Wall Street Journal" reports the company's new high-end handset is selling quite well in some of the retail markets.
Robbins & Myers (RBN) a gain of $8.79, big earnings, third quarter, $0.62, up from $0.39 a year ago, boosted its 2008 guidance from a high of $2.03 to now a high of $2.31 a share.
Petrohawk Energy (HK) up $3.35. The company's Haynesville oil shale operations are doing very well in natural gas output and other companies have an interest in that Haynesville thing, did well today, look at that.
Chesapeake Energy (CHK), Comstock Resources (CRK), Encana Corp (ECA), Goodrich Petroleum (GDP), Penn Virginia (PVA) all on the plus side very nicely.
Cleveland Cliffs (CLF) up $7.87. Deutsche Bank brokerage upgraded its price target from $115 all the way up to $150 a share.
Campbell Soup Co (CPB) up $1.28. As we touched on, the company's going to buy back $1.2 billion of its own stock, sees fiscal 2008 earnings at the high end of its growth estimate for 5 to 7 percent, nice day for Campbell.
H&R Block (HRB) up $0.58, traded as high as $22.85 this morning. Fourth quarter earnings, $2.11, well above $1.81 last year. Revenues up 11 percent. The company's going to buy back up to $2 billion of its own stock and it's boosting the dividend by 5.3 percent on top of that.
Red Lion Hotels (RLH) up $0.92 after trading as high as $8.66 today. The company said it received a preliminary non-binding indication of interest to acquire the company from Columbia Pacific, but no specific terms announced.
NASDAQ's most active, Apple (AAPL) down $2.65.
Research in Motion (RIMM) fell $4.08.
Google (GOOG) $1.65 loss there.
Microsoft (MSFT) fell $0.12.
And then Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.35 loss.
Intel (INTC) dropped a penny.
Qualcomm (QCOM) off $1.28.
But a gainer, First Solar (FSLR) up $6.57.
Oracle (ORCL) $0.29 loss there.
And Baidu.com (BIDU) down $0.28 a share.
Myriad Genetics (MYGN) down $2.41 on disappointing trial results on an Alzheimer's drug that it's jointly developing with Lundbeck.
And gainer in NASDAQ, NDS Group (NNDS) nice rise of $9.50. The company said it received a $60 a share takeover bid from a group led by News Corporation.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
