Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened moderately lower today, as investors were still rattled by yesterday's 500-point tumble in the Dow. The market did recover its initial losses in stair-step fashion on reports AIG might get some government assistance. Another sharp drop in oil also helped the Dow to a 50-point gain by 2:00 p.m. Then, the Fed's decision to hold rates steady wiped out those gains for a while, but a snappy late rally came along and had stocks closing at their best levels of the day. The Dow Industrial Average rose 141.51 points, ending at 11,059.02. The NASDAQ Composite was up 27.99 at 2,207.90. Standard & Poor's 500 rose 20.90 to end at 1,213.60. In the bond market, the 10-year note fell 7/32 to 104 23/32, putting the yield at 3.43 percent.
The most active New York issue on 11.3 million shares was American International Group (AIG), losing $1.01. You heard the story earlier, ratings, of course, of the company were lowered, and the stock traded as low as $1.25 today. So it rallied rather nicely later in the session.
Citigroup (C), a $0.51 gain. And then General Electric (GE), a $0.46 advance.
Wachovia (WB) up $0.80.
Bank of America (BAC) up $3.
And it's acquiring Merrill Lynch (MER), and that had a pretty good day itself, up $5.12.
Washington Mutual (WM), a $0.36 gain.
A $0.33 advance in Ford Motor (F).
Wells Fargo (WFC) did well, up $3.93.
And then Pfizer (PFE), 10th in volume, down $0.24.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) gained $3.08. The company will restructure in the wake of its acquisition of EDS (EDS). It will cut over 24,000 jobs, or 7.5 percent of the workforce. But the company does say it will meet its fourth-quarter earnings projections.
On the downside, Best Buy (BBY) losing $1.30. Second-quarter earnings, $0.48, down from $0.55 last year, $0.09 below the Wall Street consensus.
Then we see Goldman Sachs Group (GS) down only $2.49 on the close, but it traded as low as $117.24 today. It reported third-quarter earnings down 70 percent from last year, $1.81 this year versus $6.13 a year ago. But that was $0.10 above the Wall Street consensus, incidentally.
Monsanto (MON) moved up $7.93. The company boosted its 2008 earnings guidance from $3.37 a share to as much as $3.50 a share.
Big insurance company Chubb (CB) up $6.53. Citigroup upgraded it from hold to buy in the belief the company will benefit from AIG's problems.
And it did the same upgrade and reasoning for Travelers (TRV), whose stock was up $5.16 at $48.86 a share.
UBS (UBS) down $1.40. It traded as low as $13.60 today, but then rallied after saying its exposure to Lehman Brothers (LEH) won't exceed $300 million.
The big packaging producer Owens-Illinois (OI) down $6.16. The company is cutting its manufacturing capacity because of the slowing economy. It did say, however, it will buy back up to $350 million of its own stock.
Constellation Energy (CEG) tumbling $17.23 on concern the company's $2 billion credit line may be pulled by UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
Topping the NASDAQ actives, Apple (AAPL) down $0.48.
A $2.45 gain in Research In Motion (RIMM).
Google (GOOG) up $9.07.
Microsoft (MSFT) fell $0.83.
Amgen (AMGN) up $3.70. The company said its experimental osteoporosis drug is showing promise with no significant side effects.
Intel (INTC), a $0.12 gain.
A $0.42 rise in Cisco (CSCO).
Dell (DELL) down $2.01. The company sees a softening in worldwide demand for its products. UBS and Standard & Poor's both earnings estimates on Dell.
Qualcomm (QCOM) up $1.10.
And then Oracle (ORCL) with a nickel loss.
Elsewhere, Synutra International (SYUT) tumbling $18.32. The baby food maker apparently has been reported to have contaminated food. But it's only sold in China. And then SanDisk (SNDK) closed up $0.63. After the close, Samsung made a $26 a share cash offer to acquire Samsung (ph). In after hours trading, the stock I saw as high as $23.50. But SanDisk, late today, rejected that bid.
Those are the "Stocks in the News" tonight.
