Transcripts

Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News

PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened with a rebound rally from yesterday`s steep sell off as bargain hunters stepped in. The buying lifted the Dow 42 points and the NASDAQ 11 points at the outset of trading. Keeping the market buoyant for the rest of the day were reports like a 2 percent rise in the purchasing manager`s February manufacturing index and a solid 0.9 percent jump in January consumer spending. So, the Dow industrial average closed up 60.12 at 11053.53. The NASDAQ Composite vaulted 33 1/4 points or 1.5 percent to 2314.64. Standard & Poor`s 500 index up 10 1/2 points at 1291.24. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 8/32 to 99 10/32, putting the yield at 4.59 percent.

Leading the volume list on the big board and leading the high tech sector rally today, Texas Instruments (TXN) traded 23.3 million shares, up $2.33 or 7.8 percent. Goldman Sachs said the company is likely to boost earnings forecast next Monday and of course, the whole semiconductor sector rose on that news. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) another semiconductor stock participating in the rally and on top of that, HSBC made positive comments regarding the company`s price cutting, getting very competitive. Teledyne Tech (TDY) up $1.87. The Jeffries brokerage upgraded it from "hold" to a "buy." And Keane (KEA) up $1.41. Wachovia upgraded it from "market perform" to "out perform" and boosted 2007 earnings estimates from $0.91 to $1.02 a share. Commscope (CTV) up $2.41, a real turnaround. Fourth quarter earnings of $0.25 versus a loss of $0.13 a share last year. Standard & Poor`s repeated a "buy" recommendation. And then Greenbrier Co (GBX) up $5.57. The railroad car maker upgraded by Bear Stearns from "peer perform" to "out perform" with a $50 a share target for the stock. Dril-Quip (DRQ) up $5.01. Fourth quarter earnings nearly tripled last year, $0.63 versus $0.22 and $0.08 better than the Street consensus. Revenues jumped 22 percent. Medco Health Solutions (MHS) up $3.56. Fourth quarter earnings nicely higher, $0.57, up from $0.48 a year ago and revenues rose 21 percent. On the downside, Payless Shoesource (PSS) off $1.45. The company improved its fourth quarter to a loss of only $0.02 versus a negative $0.22 last year, but JPMorgan downgraded it from "over weight" to "neutral" because of valuation. The stock over the last year has just about doubled. And Donaldson Co (DCI) down $2.05. The company makes filtration systems and it had earnings of $0.32 in the second quarter, up only a penny from last year and a penny below the Street estimate. Google (GOOG) topped the active list, up $2.18 after tumbling about $28 yesterday. Ford Motor Co (F) down $0.02 a share on that 4 percent drop in vehicle sales during last month. Cisco Systems (CSCO) up $0.82. CEO John Chambers was upbeat at a Merrill Lynch conference today. Apple Computer (AAPL) $0.61 rise. $0.20 gain in Intel (INTC). Microsoft (MSFT) up $0.27, fifth in dollar volume. And all high tech pluses here, Oracle (ORCL) up $0.39. Broadcom (BCOM) up $3.11. Applied Materials (AMAT) gained $0.53. Yahoo! (YHOO) a $0.12 gainer. Tenth in volume was Dell (DELL) up $0.27. And then Autodesk (ADSK) up $4.03. This is one of the reasons the high tech sector did so well. Fourth quarter earnings of Autodesk $0.37, up from $0.30 a year ago, $0.02 above the Street estimate. Those are the stocks in the news tonight, Pfizer (PFE) a $0.07 gainer. Incidentally a New Zealand study shows the company`s pain killer Celebrex increases the chances of heart attacks compared to similar drugs by two times.

Lucent Tech (LU) was a $0.07 gainer after General Electric (GE) dropped $0.11. Then Lucent with a $0.07 gain. And then we move to Nortel Networks (NT) with a $0.15 rise. Corning (GLW) had a good day, up $2 a share. The stock benefiting from strong demand for the company`s LCD products used in these new flat panel television screens. Motorola (MOT) up $0.69. EMC Corp (EMC) a $0.23 gainer. Time Warner (TWX) up a dime, tenth in big board volume.