Paul Kangas' Stocks In the News
Friday, January 20, 2006PAUL KANGAS: Another factor contributing to the big slide on Wall Street, a big rise in the price of oil. Light sweet crude for February delivery closed up $1.52 at $68.35 a barrel on the New York mercantile exchange today. That`s closing in on levels not seen since September, after hurricane Katrina knocked out a big chunk of domestic oil production in the Gulf. Today, the trouble is anxiety over supplies from Nigeria, where militants are threatening attacks on oil production facilities and Iran, which faces possible sanctions over its nuclear activity.
That surge in oil and the uninspiring earnings and guidance from GE and Citigroup sent Wall Street into a steep and high volume sell off all morning and into the early afternoon. By 1:30 p.m., the Dow was off 152 points. NASDAQ down 43 points. Earnings and oil worries continued to plague the market this afternoon as they went into free fall and closed at their worst levels of the day. Dow Industrial Average tumbled 213 1/3 points, ending at 10,667.39. It fell in three of this week`s four trading days for a net loss of 292.48 points. The NASDAQ Composite plunged 54.11, closing at 2247.70 today. It also rose just once this week and fell 69 1/3 points overall. Standard & Poor`s 500 down 23 1/2 points to 1261.49 today. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note rose 6/32 to 101 5/32, putting the yield at 4.35 percent.
Big board volume leader on a very active 54.7 million shares, General Electric (GE) off $1.31 on those disappointing earnings and guidance.
The same story with Citigroup (C) which caused (ph) a $2.25 loss there. And incidentally, the Dow stocks in general were very weak and the only gainer in the Dow 30 was McDonald`s (MCD), which rose $0.66.
There we see some of the other casualties, American Intl Group (AIG), Boeing (BA), Caterpillar (CAT), IBM (IBM), 3M Co (MMM), all down substantially, hurting the Dow of course.
Then we see Motorola (MOT) down $1.86. After the close yesterday as we reported, the company reported good fourth quarter earnings results, but forecast first quarter would fall below Street estimates. Hence, the drop in the stock.
Pfizer (PFE) down $0.26 today.
Lucent Technology (LU) a $0.03 drop. That was fifth in big board volume.
Ford Motor Co (F) down $0.32, big reorganization plans coming on Monday.
Time Warner (TWX) a $0.43 drop.
Then ExxonMobil (XOM) down $0.97.
Bank of America (BAC) a $0.95 drop.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM), tenth in volume, lost $1.01.
Schlumberger Ltd (SLB), there were gainers today and this was one of the best ones. Big earnings for Schlumberger, fourth quarter, $1.08 versus only $0.55 last year. Revenues jumped 31 percent and the company predicting 2006 revenues will be up 25 percent. Street is figuring only 18 percent rise. The oil services sector on the Schlumberger news did very well. Let`s have a look at a few of the other majors there.
Baker Hughes (BHI) and Halliburton Co (HAL) both doing very nicely.
Elsewhere in the oil sector, Kerr McGee (KMG) up $2.61. JPMorgan upgraded it from "neutral" to "over weight."
Another good gainer today, Blackrock (BLK), the investment manager, up $7.65. Yesterday it was up over $8 on good earnings and today, Morgan Stanley reportedly is in talks to acquire a controlling interest in Blackrock.
Beazer Homes USA (BZH) leading that sector down, off $3.68. CS First Boston downgraded it from "neutral" to "under perform."
AO Smith (AOS), which makes electrical products, up $4.11. A quadrupling in fourth quarter earnings over last year, $0.60 versus only $0.15 then.
Kindred Healthcare (KND) tumbling $6.63. Wachovia securities says proposed changes in Medicaid reimbursements could significantly reduce this company`s earnings results and the whole sector was weak on that.
Russell (RML) was up $1.08 and the athletic apparel maker is going to restructure. It`ll cut 2300 jobs, 1700 of them in the United States.
Finally, Imation (IMN) up $3.21. Fourth quarter earnings $0.52 versus only a nickel last year, so a very nice rise in the stock.
Google (GOOG) had its worst one-day drop both percentage and point- wise today, traded as low as $394.74. The company`s refusing to turn over search database to the Department of Justice incidentally.
Intel (INTC) off $0.64.
Apple Computer (AAPL) falling $2.95.
Microsoft (MSFT) a $0.61 drop there.
Yahoo! (YHOO) fell $0.59.
We don`t see any gainers in the active list here at all. Cisco Systems (CSCO) off $0.51.
$1.80 loss in Ebay (EBAY).
Qualcomm (QCOM) down $1.71.
Sandisk (SNDK) losing $3.94.
And Dell (DELL), tenth in volume, off $0.54.
Finally, Nitches (NICH) up $8.37. The clothing distributor had first quarter earnings of $0.42 versus a penny loss last year.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
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