Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened with a moderate rally as those May retail sales met expectations and new weekly jobless benefit claims fell a larger- than-expected 24,000. Just before noon, the Dow posted an 82-point gain and the NASDAQ Index was up 17 points. A well-received 30-year Treasury bond auction boosted the Dow to a 113-point mid-afternoon gain, but a surge in oil to a seven month high near $73 a barrel undermined stocks late in the day. So the Dow Industrial Average closed up just 31.90 points at 8,770.92. The NASDAQ Composite was up 9.29 ending at 1,862.37 while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 5.74 to 944.89. In the bond market, the 10-year note climbed 22/32 to 93 31/32 and that put the yield at 3.86 percent.
New York Stock Exchange volume leader on 69.4 million shares, Bank of America (BAC) moving up nearly $1. You heard of course the CEO Ken Lewis in his testimony in Congress and meanwhile today, Raymond James Financial, Morgan Stanley and the Keefe Bruyette brokerages all made positive comments about Bank America stock.
No change in Citigroup (C).
Regions Financial (RF) edged up $0.37.
And then Ford Motor Co (F) a $0.21 loss, even though the company's CEO is optimistic about the second half recovery. Also, today's "Wall Street Journal" reported Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings is interested in buying Ford's Volvo unit.
Pfizer (PFE) a $0.58 gain. Morgan Stanley upgraded the whole pharmaceutical sector today and the Caris brokerage noted that Pfizer might be eyeing Mylan (MYL) Labs as a takeover target. That's somewhere around $20 a share. Mylan, which trades on NASDAQ (INAUDIBLE) closed up $0.51 at $13.79 a share.
Sprint Nextel (S) $0.24 gain there.
General Electric (GE) $0.06 advance.
And JPMorgan Chase (JPM) rose a dime.
Vale Adr (VALE) $0.94 gain there.
ExxonMobil (XOM) $0.21 advance. The company has agreed with Trans Canada Corp. to build a $26 billion Alaska natural gas pipeline.
Boeing (BA) down $1.64. The company slashed its forecast for new plane demands over the next 20 years from 29,400 to a flat 29,000 because of the global recession.
UnitedHealth Group (UNH) $1.68 drop there. Oppenheimer downgraded the stock from "market perform" to "under perform."
Target (TGT) fell $0.82 even though it's boosting its quarterly dividend a penny to $0.17 a share.
Another dividend booster today, Clorox (CLX) which rose $0.16. It'll boost its quarterly dividend 9 percent. It'll go from $0.46 to $0.50 a share and Clorox also backed its 2010 earnings target of $4.15 a share at best.
Vulcan Materials (VMC) down $1.27. The company is cutting its quarterly dividend almost 50 percent from $0.49 down to only $0.25 a share. The company also sees second quarter aggregate shipments 27 to 32 percent below year ago partly because of unusually wet weather slowing down the housing construction industry.
Spartech (SEH) which makes plastic sheets and packaging materials, up $2.04, big percentage move. Second quarter earnings excluding one-time items, $0.20 versus $0.16 last year, $0.16 better than expected, no wonder the big gain.
Apple (APPL) topped the active list on NASDAQ with a $0.30 loss.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.28 gain.
Research in Motion (RIMM) up nearly $2 a share.
Google (GOOG) down $3.60.
Qualcomm (QCOM) fell $0.09 even though the company boosted third quarter earnings outlook on better than expected mobile phone chip sales. However, the company's still guarded about the fourth quarter. That might have hurt the stock a bit.
$0.15 gain in Cisco Systems (CSCO).
Intel (INTC) $0.11 loss.
eBay (EBAY) gained $0.25.
Baidu (BIDU) $2.39 advance.
And then came Oracle (ORCL) with a $0.20 gain.
Elsewhere, Palm (PALM) up $1.44, good move. Positive reaction to the company's naming former Apple executive John Rubenstein as its new CEO.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
