Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Friday, March 20, 2009
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street staged an opening bounce from yesterday's sell- off taking its cue from a recovery in the dollar, which has been hammered in recent days. An hour into trading the Dow posted a 41 point gain and the NASDAQ was up 10 points. Stocks then went into a choppy downward spiral over the next several hours. Selling linked to the quarterly expiration of stock futures and options helped send the market to its lows at the closing bell. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 122.42 points at 7278.38. This week it rose twice and then fell three times but still had a net gain of 54.40 points. The NASDAQ Composite fell 26.21 to 1457.27 today. It also rose twice and fell three times this week but it gained 25.77 points overall. Standard & Poor's 500 lost 15 1/2 points exactly to 768.54 today. For the week it was up 11.99 points. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 6/32 to 101 1/32, putting the yield at 2.63 percent.
Once again the big board volume leader today on 125 1/2 million shares, Citigroup (C) edging $0.02 higher.
Bank of America (BAC) however, down $0.74.
American Intl Group (AIG) $0.36 loss.
General Electric (GE) down $0.59.
Alcoa (AA) managed to gain $0.14.
And then ExxonMobil (XOM) down $2.24. Oil down a bit today.
Wells Fargo (WFC) off $1.43, some profit taking in that recently strong banking sector.
Pfizer (PFE) $0.07 loss there.
JPMorgan (JPM) on the downside by $1.80.
And then tenth in volume was AT&T (T) losing $0.27.
American Express (AXP) down $0.81. FBR Capital is cutting its price target from $12 to $10 a share in the belief American Express will see more credit card defaults. And FBR also said it probably will see a quarterly cut in the dividend from $0.18 down to $0.05 per share.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), another Dow stock, but this one on the upside by $1.61. UBS Financial upgraded it from "neutral" to "buy" in the belief the various drugs in the company's pipeline will restart growth for the company.
And there you see Xerox (XRX) down one full dollar, almost 19 percent drop. The company cut its first quarter earnings guidance from $0.16 to $0.20, all the way down to only $0.03 to $0.05 a share and Standard & Poor's downgraded the stock from "hold" to a "sell."
Cabot (CBT) which is in the business of carbon black, down $0.96. JPMorgan Chase downgraded the stock from "over weight" to "neutral."
And then Consolidated Graphics (CGX) tumbling $3.38, almost a 22 1/2 percent drop there. The company cut its fourth quarter earnings guidance from $0.35 to $0.55, all the way down to $0.05 to $0.15 a share and says business is the worst in its 24-year history.
Autonation (AN) losing $1.03, $1.63. UBS financial downgraded it from "neutral" to "sell" on concerns about the company's liquidity.
And Simon Property Group (SPG) down $1.58. The company has priced a public offering of its common shares, 15 million of them, at $31.50. It said it will use the proceeds to pay down some debt. Standard & Poor's repeated a "strong buy" on Simon stock.
J. Crew Group (JCG) off $1.32. Brean Murray brokerage downgraded it from "hold" to "sell."
NASDAQ's most active, Apple (AAPL) down $0.03.
Followed by Google (GOOG) up $0.22.
Microsoft (MSFT) an $0.08 drop.
Oracle (ORCL) lost $0.27.
Intel (INTC) a $0.50 drop, not much movement in this active list.
$0.32 drop in Cisco Systems (CSCO).
Qualcomm (QCOM) fell $0.58.
Research in Motion (RIMM) down $0.66.
Aamazon.com (AMZN) $0.14 drop.
And then Gilead Sciences (GILD) managed to gain a penny, tenth in NASDAQ volume.
Finally, Neurogesx (NGSX) up $1.17, 60 percent gain on news a European Union panel is recommending the company's pain patch called Quitensa be approved in Europe.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
