Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Monday, September 15, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: The turmoil among the big financial firms dominated trading on Wall Street today. The Dow ended near its lowest level of the session, falling 504.48 points at 10,917.51. The NASDAQ Composite tumbled 81.36, ending at 2,179.91. While the Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged exactly 59 points to 1,192.70. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note soared 2 25/32 to 105 4/32 on flight to safety buying, and that put the yield all the way down to 3.39 percent.
The financial sector was the story on Wall Street today, so we're going to look at that first in an abbreviated stocks report.
Let's start with AIG (AIG), which was the Big Board volume leader. The stock losing almost 61 percent of its value.
And then move on to Lehman (LEH) which now is a penny stock at $0.21. Hard to believe it was as high $68 a share within the last year.
Then came Bank of America (BAC) losing $7.19 on its bid for Merrill Lynch.
Merrill (MER) itself moved up $0.01 at $17.06. That stock deal today is worth about $23 a share in Bank of America's stock to Merrill Lynch, mainly because of the big drop in Bank of America stock.
Goldman Sachs Group (GS) down $18.71. Tomorrow the company will release its third-quarter results. The Street consensus is for a 72 percent drop in earnings versus last year. The airlines were strong as oil prices fell below $100 for the first time since March, closing at $95.71 a barrel, down $5.47. Let's take a look at that airline sector. We see AMR (AMR) and most of the others up, but not up as much as they were earlier in the morning. AMR (AMR) closed at $11.30, up only $0.91.
We have Continental (CAL), Delta (DAL), United (UAUA), and U.S. Airways (LCC) -- there we see it, up $0.04, but they were all much higher during the day.
The steels were weak today, falling as a UBS analyst cut his production targets. And the major players, AK Steel (AKS), Nucor (NUE), Reliance (RS), and U.S. Steel (X), all significantly on the downside.
There were other deals on the Street today. Shares of Longs Drug Stores (LDG) rising $4.09. It said the company received a $75 a share buyout bid from Walgreen (WAG), whose stock fell $1.80.
Then Brookfield Properties (BPO) fell $3.88. The company's largest tenant is Merrill Lynch, and you heard the news there.
In NASDAQ trading, Napster shares (NAPS) jumped $1.17, or 86 percent. The company is being bought by Best Buy (BBY) for $2.65 a share in cash.
And finally, Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) fell $5.32. Electronic Arts Corp. (ERTS) has abandoned its $25.74 a share bid to Take-Two. And that's an abbreviated look at our "Stocks in the News" tonight.
