Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Friday, February 06, 2009
|
|
|
|
PAUL KANGAS: Despite that worse than expected jobs report, Wall Street opened sharply higher, apparently because investors figured the bad numbers would speed up passage of an improved stimulus plan. The Dow rose steadily to a 178-point gain by noontime with the NASDAQ up 32 points. The surge carried the Dow up as much as 235 points this afternoon, but then it pulled back a bit on normal pre-weekend caution. The Dow Industrial Average finally closed up 217.52 at 8280.59. This week it fell twice and rose three times and had a net advance of 279.73 points. The NASDAQ Composite gained 45.47 points to 1591.71 today. This week it fell only once and rose 115.29 points overall. The Standard & Poor's 500 gained 22.75 points to 868.60 today and for the week, it was up 42.72 points. In the bond market, the 10- year note fell 24/32 to 106 11/32, lifting the yield to exactly 3.00 percent.
Big board volume leader fourth day in a row, today on 107 million shares, Bank of America (BAC) a big percentage move up, $1.29 gain. The chief executive officer says the company has no need for additional capital. It will not be nationalized and he set a three-year time limit to pay off its $45 billion TARP loan.
Citigroup (C) moved up $0.38, good percentage move there.
General Electric (GE) $0.25 advance. Hard to believe GE's down 70 percent in the past year and today JPMorgan cut its price target to only $9 a share.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) moving up $3.09.
And then Wells Fargo (WFC) with a good gain of $2.87 in that strong banking group.
Co Vale do Rio (RIO) up $1.37.
Pfizer (PFE) a $0.34 gain.
ExxonMobil (XOM) rose $0.96.
Petrobras (PBR) up $1.70.
And Regions Financial (RF), another strong bank stock, up $1.37.
IBM (IBM) up $3.73. It was one of the leaders of a strong tech group this week and today, IBM and Google - I should say last night IBM and Google announced a joint venture and I'll get to that with some details in a moment.
Hartford Financial (HIG) down $2.41. Fourth quarter loss out today, $0.72 a share in the red versus earnings of $2.66 a year ago and the company will cut its quarterly dividend from $0.32 all the way down to a nickel.
Aon Corp (AOC), this is an insurance company that had better earnings, fourth quarter, $0.81, up from $0.68 last year. Stock up nicely.
Weyerhaeuser Co (WY), the big lumber producer, $0.67 gain, even though it had a fourth quarter loss of $0.99. Street estimate was for a loss of only $0.57 and the company sees no near-term improvement in its business because of the housing slump.
Roper Industries (ROP) up $4.21. The industrial products manufacturer had fourth quarter earnings $0.78, a penny higher than last year on a 3 percent rise in revenues.
Pitney Bowes (PBI), this company manufactures mail processing equipment and fourth quarter earnings $0.77. That's up from $0.72 a year ago.
Skechers USA (SKX), the footwear company, down $2.67, almost a 26 1/2 percent drop. The company sees a fourth quarter loss of $0.45 to $0.50 a share, says that inventory build up has been a problem.
Mettler-Toledo (MTD), which makes scales, down $6.48. Fourth quarter earnings were weighing on the stock, $1.84, a nickel below the Street estimate.
Google (GOOG) topped the active list on NASDAQ, up $17.56. Google and IBM are teaming up to provide digitized health records.
Apple (AAPL) up $3.26.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.62 advance.
Research in Motion (RIMM) was up $2.37.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.69 gain there.
Qualcomm (QCOM) up $1.28.
Intel (INTC) a $0.48 advance.
Amazon.com (AMZN) had a good week, winding it up strongly, $3.37 gain.
And Gilead Sciences (GILD) up $0.22.
Oracle (ORCL) a $0.35 advance.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
