Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Friday, October 24, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened sharply lower with the Dow plunging 500 points at the outset of trading while the NASDAQ fell 60 points. While some traders feared the sell off would go into free fall, others were hoping that would mark a clear cut bottom, but neither happened as stocks made a partial comeback but still ended sharply lower. The Dow Industrial Average closed off 312.30 at 8378.95 today. This week it rose twice, fell three times for an overall loss of 473.27 points. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 51.88 to 1552.03 today. For the week it rose only once and had a net loss of 159.26 points. Standard & Poor's 500 down 31.34 to 876.77 today and for the week, it tumbled 63.78 points. Over in the bond market, early gains from flight to safety buying dried up late in the day. The 10-year note fell 2/32 to 102 16/32 putting the yield at 3.69 percent.
Big board volume leader on 48.4 million shares, National City (NCC) $0.68 drop. As you heard, PNC Financial will acquire it for stock worth about $2.30 a share. That's .0392 PNC shares for each of NCC. PNC stock was up $2 at $58.88.
General Electric (GE) $0.97 loss.
Same story with Citigroup (C).
AT&T (T) fell $0.58.
And Bank of America (BAC) losing $1.93.
Moving along in the active list, Pfizer (PFE) $0.53 drop.
ExxonMobil (XOM) down $1.35. December oil in New York dropped $3.69 to $64.15 a barrel despite OPEC's decision to cut production by 1.5 million (INAUDIBLE). Exxon traded as low as $64.30.
Let's have a look at some of the major oils and see how they reacted. We see BP PLC ADR (BP), Chevron (CVX), Conocophillips (COP), Hess (HES) and Marathon Oil (MRO) all on the downside despite that drop in production by OPEC.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) $2.42 loss.
Ford Motor Co (F) managed to gain $0.01.
And then Wells Fargo (WFC) a $0.42 drop.
American International Group (AIG) was down $0.40. The "Washington Post" reports the company has already consumed $75 billion of the Federal $85 billion reserve loan that it received.
Sony (SNE) down $1.64. The Tokyo market overnight of course tumbled 10 percent and the company itself cut full year profit forecasts in half and the dollar strength is hurting Sony.
ITT Corp (ITT) $3.90 loss there. Third quarter earnings higher though, $1.11 versus $0.92, but the company cut its 2008 guidance from a high of $4.17 to $4.03 at best.
Timken Co (TKR) down $5.61. Third quarter earnings jumped to $1.35 from $0.43 last year, but the company sees fourth quarter at only $0.16 to $0.26 a share.
Devry (DV) a $3.50 gain. Higher earnings, $0.48 in the first quarter, versus $0.37 last year. Revenues up 21 percent.
And then Western Digital (WDC) did well, up $1.65. First quarter earnings tripled, $0.93 versus $0.31 a year ago, a 19 percent rise in revenues. Needham Securities brokerage upgraded it from "buy" to "strong buy."
Hartford Financial (HIG) up $3.39. As you heard, "Wall Street Journal" reports the Treasury Department is considering taking equity stakes in insurance companies and let's have a look at some of the other majors.
Lincoln National (LNC) up only $0.43 on the close, but it traded as high as $22.63.
Metlife (MET) up $1.96.
And Prudential Financial (PRU) was up just over $2, not bad.
NASDAQ's most active, Apple (AAPL) $1.85 loss there.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.36 drop on the rather disappointing outlook last night.
Google (GOOG) down $13.03.
$1.24 loss in Research in Motion (RIMM).
Cisco Systems (CSCO) down $0.93.
Intel (INTC) $0.23 drop.
Amazon (AMZN) fell $1.36.
Qualcomm (QCOM) down $0.28.
And finally a gainer, Amgen (AMGN) up $1.62 on good earnings (INAUDIBLE)
And Oracle (ORCL) $0.75 loss.
Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) down $3.25, almost 29 percent of its value lost today after Goldman Sachs downgraded it from "neutral" to "sell" and Fitch downgraded the company's long-term issue default rating.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
