Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Thursday, June 18, 2009
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street's blue chips moved moderately higher amid those signs that the economic recovery still had life. As Susie mentioned that better than expected jobless claims data helped the Dow to a 76 point gain an hour into trading, while the NASDAQ Composite was up just one point. The blue chips maintained most of their early gains right on through to the closing bell thanks to a positive reading on the Philadelphia manufacturing index. The Dow ended with a gain of 38, let's make that 58.42 at 8555.60. The NASDAQ Composite actually fell .34 closing at 1807.72. Standard & Poor's 500 managed to gain 7.66, ending at 918.37. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 31/32 to 94 13/32, putting the yield at 3.81 percent.
New York exchange volume leader on 49 3/4 million shares, Bank of America (BAC) moving up $0.60.
Followed by Citigroup (C) with a nickel gain.
Then General Electric (GE) with an $0.18 loss.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) gained $1.44.
Wells Fargo (WFC) was up $0.61. The company's CEO said he would like to repay TARP $25 billion as soon as possible, but no specific date was named.
AIG (AIG) a $0.07 gain.
Followed by Pfizer (PFE) up $0.34. A Canadian Federal court upheld Pfizer's patent for Viagra and that dashes Teva Pharmaceutical's hope to produce a generic version.
Ford Motor (F) fell $0.03.
Regions Financial (RF) moving up $0.04.
Tenth in volume was Alcoa (AA) with a $0.29 gain.
Caterpillar (CAT) down $0.72. The company said sales globally the three months ending in May fell 43 percent. In North America, those sales tumbled 57 percent.
Nike (NKE) closed up with $1.67 gain and Credit Suisse repeated an "out perform" rating with a 2010 earnings estimate of $4 a share and a price target of $65 a share.
Carnival Corp. (CCL), the big cruise line, up $1.72. Second quarter earnings fell to $0.33 from $0.49 a year ago, but that was $0.05 above the Street estimate and the company sees third quarter earnings rising rather dramatically to $1.15 to $1.19 a share.
Con-Way (CNW), the big trucker, up $1.91. Baird downgraded it from "neutral," I should say upgraded it from "neutral" to "out perform" on the expected benefits the company might get from the bankruptcy of rival YRC Worldwide. YRC however said it's not considering bankruptcy.
Exelon Corporation (EXC) up $2.03. The nation's largest nuclear power producer plans a $350 million cost cutting program, including the elimination of some 500 support staff.
Nelnet (NNI) $2.62 gain. The company was awarded a U.S. Department of Education contract to service Federal student loans and we'll have more on student lending coming up shortly in the program.
Acutiy Brands (AYI) up $1.92. Sidoti brokerage sees the company benefiting from an increasing focus on energy efficient lighting.
And it had to be good for that stock to be up $4.22, earnings that is. Smucker (SJM) had a fourth quarter earnings of $0.80 a share, way above $0.67 last year and sales soared 81 percent and that was largely due to the acquisition of Folgers.
Cubic Corp. (CUB) down $2.68. The Needham brokerage downgraded it from "buy" to "hold" on valuation.
NASDAQ's most active Research in Motion (RIMM) closed down $0.66 in regular, excuse me, way trading. After the close however, the first quarter earnings were $1.12 versus $0.84, pretty good, but the company gave a cautious outlook and in after hours trading, the stock plummeted $4 a share.
Apple (AAPL) $0.30 gain there.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.18 drop.
Google (GOOG) was off $1.10.
Intel (INTC) $0.27 loss there.
Qualcomm (QCOM) was up $0.19.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.21 loss.
Oracle (ORCL) gained $0.31.
Amgen (AMGN) up $0.22.
Amazon.com (AMZN) down $1.01.
Elsewhere, HLTH Corp. (HLTH) up $1.50. The company's going to merge with WebMD in a stock deal worth about $13.35 a share to HLTH shareholders.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
