Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Thursday, October 02, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened sharply lower on those investor concerns the rescue plan might not pass, or even if it does, it won't be enough to snap the economy out of the doldrums. By midday the Dow was already down 265 points with the NASDAQ off 61 points. Stock prices continued to fall this afternoon amid a host of corporate earnings cuts and analyst downgrades. And the major indices ended at the day's lowest levels. The Dow Industrial Average closed off 348.22 points at 10,482.85. The NASDAQ Composite plunged 92.68 ending at 1,976.72. While the Standard & Poor's 500 Index tumbled 46.78 to 1,114.28. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note rose 30/32 to 103 2/32, pushing the yield down to 3.63 percent.
By far and away the most active Big Board issue on 157 million shares was General Electric (GE), down $2.35. The company priced an offering of 547 million shares of common stock at $22.25 a share.
National City (NCC), was up $0.25.
Wachovia (WB) gained $0.36.
Citigroup (C) down a half a dollar.
And then Pfizer (PFE), a $0.15 loss there.
MetLife (MET) plunging $7.19. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said a well-known insurance company is on the verge of bankruptcy. He didn't name any specific company, but it certainly sent the whole sector lower. MetLife said it's financially sound and later a spokesman for Reid said MetLife was not the company he was referring to.
Let's have some other hard-hit insurance stocks, though, Hartford Financial (HIG), Prudential (PRU), and XL Capital (XL), all sizeable losses.
Alcoa (AA) down $1.89. Goldman Sachs downgraded it from buy to neutral. Earnings are due out next week from Alcoa.
Another Dow stock, Boeing (BA), down $3.04. The Jefferies brokerage cut its price target from $100 to $85 a share. And the Barnes Group (B) off $3.03. The company cut its full-year earnings guidance because of the strike at Boeing, which is hurting its aerospace business. That accounts for 20 percent of its total sales.
Then came the fertilizer stocks, hard-hit Potash (POT) tumbling $34.53. Merrill Lynch downgraded it from buy to underperform on the weakening fertilizer demand.
And did the same downgrade on a host of other fertilizer stocks like Agrium (AGU), CF (CF), Intrepid (IPI).
And Mosaic (MOS) down $27.86, first-quarter earnings for Mosaic, $2.65, but that was $0.29 below the Street estimate.
Then Terra Industries (TRA) lost $5.79.
Monsanto (MON), another agribusiness stock hard-hit by sellers, even though Monsanto boosted its 2008 earnings forecast from $3.60 to $3.64 a share.
Then came the transportation stocks hard-hit. Con-Way (CNW), the truck, down $8.78. The company cut its 2008 earnings guidance from a high of $3.40 all the way down to $2.80 a share at best, because of weak demand for its freight transportation services.
And other transport stocks hard-hit on that news, the rails especially, Burlington (BNI), CSX (CSX), and then trucker J.B. Hunt (JBHT), Norfolk Southern (NSC), and Union Pacific (UNP) all major losses. Incidentally, the Dow Transport Index tumbled almost 400 points, or 8.7 percent.
Then Constellation Energy (CEG) up $3.49 -- $3.48, I should say. The company's takeover by Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK) MidAmerican Energy is progressing nicely. And wouldn't you know, one of the few gainers is a Warren Buffett deal.
NASDAQ's most active, Apple (AAPL) down $9.02. Nokia (NOK) is introducing a new touchscreen phone, which offers free music. Competition there.
Microsoft (MSFT), a $0.23 loss.
Google (GOOG) plunging $21.23.
Research In Motion (RIMM) down $4.93.
And then Intel (INTC) with a loss of $1.32.
And then finally the shares of Atmel (ATML) rose $1.12 to $4.40 on news chipmakers Microchip Technology (MCHP) and semiconductor -- ON Semiconductor (ONNN) is the name of the other firm, will acquire the company for $2.3 billion, or $5 per share.
