Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened on a mixed note with the blue chips posting an early 115-point gain in the Dow and that was thanks partly to those new government programs to boost consumer lending. But the NASDAQ fell 26 points early on as tech stocks were hit by profit- taking. Continuing losses in the tech sector dragged the Dow to a 122 point loss in mid-afternoon, but then some pretty good late buying helped the market end narrowly mixed. The Dow Industrial Average closed up 36.08 at 8479.47. The NASDAQ fell 7.29 to 1464.73. while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 5.58 at 857.39. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note gained 1 28/32 to 105 14/32, putting the yield all the way down to 3.11 percent.
Big board volume leader was Citigroup (C) trading 54.6 million shares, stock moving up $0.13. The Sandler O'Neill brokerage upgraded Citigroup's stock from "hold" to "buy."
Bank of America (BAC) edged up $0.21.
General Electric (GE) a $0.51 gain. GE will provide service agreements worth over $1 billion in the next 18 years to Algeria's state-owned power company.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) up $2.19.
ExxonMobil (XOM) down $0.69 as oil dropped a bit today.
Pfizer (PFE) $0.10 loss there.
Wells Fargo (WFC) edged up $0.93.
AT&T (T) a $0.35 gain.
And then ITT Corp (ITT) down $0.73.
Petrobras (PBR), the Brazilian oil up $0.19, tenth in volume.
Goldman Sachs (GS) up $4.36. The company launched a $5 billion offering of debt backed by the FDIC. Demand was good and other major banks are expected to follow suit with their own offerings.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) was a drag on the market today, down $2.10. Its fourth quarter earnings came out $1.03, versus $0.86. That was right in line with the company's recent pre-announcement of those earnings, but now it sees unfavorable currency impact on its first quarter results. That hurt the stock.
Rio Tinto (RTP) plunging almost $40 a share, traded as low as $93.79 on news that BHP Billiton has backed out of its all-stock buyout offer saying that that offer is no longer in the best interests of its shareholders.
BHP Billiton (BHP) was up $4.85 to $38.27.
Lennar (LEN) up $1.45, big percentage move there. UBS financial upgraded it from "neutral" to "buy" and other home builders' stocks were up on the Federal Reserve programs (INAUDIBLE) credit markets by supporters holders of asset-backed securities.
Let's look at a board of those other home builder stocks, DR Horton (DHI), despite reporting a big fourth quarter loss, was up $1.90.
MDC Holdings (MDC) did well.
And NVR (NVR), high-priced issue, even higher.
And Ryland Group (RYL) up $1.65, nice percentage gain there.
Analog Devices (ADI) on the other hand, down $1.22, despite higher fourth quarter earnings, $0.49, up from $0.30 a year ago, but the company says its first quarter revenues could drop as much as 20 percent. Obviously that hurt the stock.
Treehouse Foods (THS) losing $4.10. Credit Suisse brokerage downgraded it from "out perform" to just a "neutral" rating.
And Universal Tech Inst (UTI) rising $2.05, a turnaround, fourth quarter earnings of $0.02 versus a loss of a nickel a share last year and BMO Capital brokerage upgraded it from "market perform" to "out perform."
The big jewelry chain, Zale (ZLC) tumbling $3.73, a 41 percent loss. First quarter loss of $1.43. The Street was expecting a loss of just $0.95 and same store sales were down 3.7 percent.
NASDAQ's most active, Apple (AAPL) $2.15 loss there.
But Google (GOOG) did pretty well today, up $24.61.
Microsoft (MSFT) rising $0.70. There's a rumor making the rounds Microsoft will launch a smart phone based on its Zune music player technology.
Research in Motion (RIMM) down $3.76.
Cisco (CSCO) off $0.98. Cisco's going to shut down its U.S. and Canadian offices from December 29th to January 2nd because of flagging demand for its products.
Oracle (ORCL) $0.66 loss.
Intel (INTC) dropped $0.43.
Qualcomm (QCOM) $0.13 drop there.
Amgen (AMGN) fell $1.06.
And Gilead Sciences (GILD) up $1.41.
Daktronics (DAKT) up $1.34, almost a 20 percent rise. Second quarter earnings nearly tripled from last year, $0.30. They did triple, versus only $0.10 then and that was $0.11 better than the Street consensus.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
