Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened higher as some bargain buyers tried to get a little Santa Claus rally going. The Dow rose 70 points early on while the NASDAQ gained 15 points, but those dire reports on home sales and a dismal reading on third quarter GDP turned stocks lower. By 1:00 p.m., the Dow posted a 56 point loss with the NASDAQ off 10 points. End of year portfolio shuffling and tax loss selling late in the day sent the market to a broadly lower closing. The Dow Industrial Average ended down 100.28 points at 8419.49. The NASDAQ Composite lost 10.81 points ending at 1521.54, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 8.47 to 863.16. In the bond market, the 10-year note rose 1/32 to 113 31/32, putting the yield at 2.17 percent.
New York exchange volume leader on 20 million shares was General Electric (GE) moving up $0.36.
Then Ford Motor Co (F) down $0.40. Moody's has lowered several credit ratings on Ford and has a negative outlook on the company.
Citigroup (C) $0.23 drop there.
Bank of America (BAC) lost $0.78. Standard & Poor's is concerned about this company's tangible capital levels and thinks that Bank of America may need to cut its dividend again.
CIT Group (CIT) up $0.08. The Treasury will buy $2.3 billion of the company's stock and that means it has been approved as a bank holding company.
Moving along in the active list, Pfizer (PFE) down $0.15.
ExxonMobil (XOM) moved up $0.19.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) $0.71 loss there.
Merck (MRK) managed to gain $0.32.
Tenth in volume, Compania Vale (RIO) was up, down $0.20 a share.
General Motors (GM) itself losing almost 15 percent of its value today with that loss of $0.52. Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on the company's unsecured debt.
American Greetings (AM) down $3.54, almost 36 percent. The company had a third quarter loss of $4.25 a share versus earnings of $0.52 last year. The company blamed hefty one-time charges and much lower sales due to the bad economy.
Textron (TXT) had a tough day, down $3.14. The company is cutting its fourth quarter earnings guidance from the range of $0.80 to $0.90 a share all the way down to $0.30 to $0.40 a share. It will also eliminate 2200 jobs worldwide. That's 5 1/2 percent of the workforce. It's also exiting all of its commercial finance businesses except for financing customer purchases.
Red Hat (RHT) up $1.02. Third quarter earnings up 20 percent from $0.10 to $0.12 a share. Revenues up 22 percent during the period.
Then Prologis (PLD) up $0.94. It traded as high as $11.25. The company's in a pact to sell its operations in China for $1.3 billion.
KV Pharmaceuticals (KV.A) plunging almost 50 percent of its value today. The company's recalling a single production of its pain killer hydromorphone due to a report of an oversized tablet. It also is voluntarily suspending all shipments of its other FDA approved products in tablet form and this will have an adverse material impact on the company's results according to the spokesman.
Cemex Sab (CX), the big, not Canadian, Mexican cement maker, refinanced $3.7 billion of its debt, reassuring investors that it would not default.
Apple (AAPL) topped the NASDAQ active list, up $0.64.
Google (GOOG) a $0.91 advance.
Microsoft (MSFT) rose $0.10.
Research in Motion (RIMM) gaining $0.22.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) a $0.13 loss.
Qualcomm (QCOM) down $0.63.
Intel (INTC) dropped $0.27.
Gilead Sciences (GILD) in the red by $0.30.
And then Oracle (ORCL) $0.22 drop there.
First solar (FLSR) up $4.36.
And finally, shares in Washington Federal (WFSL) slid $4.29 after the saving and loan slashed its quarterly dividend 76 percent. It'll go from $0.21 to only a nickel per share.
