Citigroup (C) Worries about bank nationalization take shares to $1.61 from 52-week high of $27.35.
Bank of American (BAC) Ditto. Down to $2.53 from 52-week high of $43.50.
Wells Fargo (WFC) More of the same. Plunges to $8.81 from 52-week high of $44.75.
GE (GE) Worries about writedowns at financial services wing. Drops to $8.98 from 52-week high of $38.52.
GM (GM) Bankruptcy fears bring stock down to $1.52 from 52-week high of $25.64.
Douglas A. McIntyre
Today marks a monumental moment for the markets. The DJIA has broken through some of the major key support levels of November 2008, and now the questions are mounting over whether the S&P and NASDAQ will hold those levels as well.
But yesterday shares of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) briefly broke under $10.00. Today, the shares are solidly under $10.00 and guessing where a bottom may be is as useful as betting for or against the local weatherman’s forecast. The market is trading G.E. as though it was a troubled bank. With the speculation of major bank nationalizations coming, we wanted to see what the actual correlation was.
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Beacon Power Corporation (NASDAQ:BCON) is developing a patented flywheel energy storage product, and the going is getting tough. The company today announced an $18 million investment from a private equity firm and the share price is heading toward a new 52-week low.
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Oil refiner Tesoro Corporation (NYSE:TSO) reported fourth quarter earnings of $317 million (EPS of $0.99), excluding special items. On a GAAP basis, the company earned $97 million (EPS of $0.70). The company wrote down an uncollectable receivable that cost it $0.41/share, or about $57 million.
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The China Development Bank appears to be following the maxim of uber-capitalist Warren Buffet: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. This week the Chinese announced an agreement to lend $25 billion to Russia for the construction of a crude oil pipeline that would provide them 300,000 barrels/day of crude for 20 years. Now, the bank has announced an agreement to lend $10 billion to Petroleo Brasiliero, aka Petrobras, (NYSE:PBR) to develop the massive Santos basin discovery offshore Brazil.
The IPO market could optimistically be called “Dwindling.” It seems that the trend for withdrawn IPO’s is trumping new filings as the norm rather than actual deals making it to market. We have only had two real IPOs since last summer, but both performed well since coming on the market. It makes one wonder if firms have a good defensive model that can hold up if they should bite the bullet and price their deals. Today’s market caution has dried up the demand for just about all new issues.
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TheStreet.com (Nasdaq: TSCM) released its Q4 results tonight and reported EPS of breakeven, in-line with the analysts’ estimates. Revenue for the quarter was $16.5 million, versus the consensus of $17.34 million.
TheStreet has cut some of its overhead costs, but to be cash flow positive it may have to make additional cost cuts. TheStreet has office space that it could sublease and potentially could close other offices. The company is trading near cash value and likely will not see a major fall in its stock price after this quarter’s earnings.
If you can imagine any good news at all on the economic front, inflation is running at very low levels. January’s CPI was +0.3% and +0.2% on the core level.
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These are the top pre-market analyst upgrades and downgrades we have seen from Wall Street this Friday morning:
JON C. OGG
February 20, 2009
The good news from JCPenney (JCP) was that it finished the year with $3.4 billion in cash.
The bad news is that the company is slowly disappearing. It expects same-store sales in the current quarter to be down as much as 15% from last year’s quarter. Read More
Joseph Lazzaro, DailyFinance
Oil surged more than 7% Thursday and briefly traded above $40, after U.S. weekly oil inventories unexpectedly declined. But traders don’t view it as a market reversal.
The oil bulls are certainly trying to make the case that oil has bottomed at $35. Officially, oil for March delivery closed Thursday at $39.48 per barrel up $4.86 on NYMEX.
While some folks believe Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster is an Apple perma-bull (his firm makes a market in AAPL stock), a look back will tell you Gene gets it right more often than his peers. Munster just reiterated his “Buy” rating on Apple shares with a 12-month price target of $180.
Back in 2003, before the iPod went from merely popular to a cultural icon, Munster was one of the only analysts predicting huge iPod numbers while others saw saturation. And his perspective has been largely correct even since (maybe his bullishness gets him more detailed Apple briefings than his peers?). Read More
The New York Times (NYT) suspended its dividend. That says a lot about what it sees as it looks out of the next quarter. Print and online advertising must be getting much worse than last year.
Less than four months ago, the Times lowered the dividend from 23 cents to 6 cents. So the publisher is giving up on sending money to shareholders, including the founding Sulzberger family. Read More
Now that the DJIA has dropped below 7,500 it is clear that its next stop may be much lower. The market is still terribly concerned about the banking system. Rumors about better access to credit are overblown. Unemployment should be 9% by the end of the year. Even the Fed is willing to admit that. There is no reason to believe that corporate earnings will improve, and cash is getting tight at companies, even some very big ones. Read More
Will GM (GM) and Chrysler file for protection from creditors, their unions, and supplier costs? Now there is a recent precedent to do so, maybe they are more likely to.
Saab went belly up. Read More
Does the economy get worse from here or do the government programs recently signed into law increase confidence and start to put capital to work to create jobs and build businesses? In a downturn the bottom is only noticed after the fact. Data on employment, consumer spending, and capital expenditures often follow what has actually happened by months. Read More
Layoffs at big companies are so common now that it is novel when a day goes by without Microsoft (MSFT), Caterpillar (CAT), or Macy’s (MC) letting thousands of people go. There are a relatively small number of America’s largest companies which will almost certainly not have significant layoffs. One of them might close an office in Turkey, another could replace telephone operators with an automated system, but each is in a unique position that makes it highly unlikely for them to want or need to fire employees. Read More
According to Reuters, Allan Stanford was found in Virginia.
Reuters reports that the stimulus is unlikely to fix state problems.
Reuters writes that US consumer prices probably moved up in January. Read More
Markets in Asia were lower
The Nikkei fell 1.9% to 7,416.
The Hang Seng was down 2.5% to 12,703.
The Shanghai Composite rose 1.5% to 2,261.
In Europe, at the open, the FTSE was off 1.4% to 3,965. The Dax was down 1.8% to 4,141. The CAC 40 fell 1.5% to 2,739.
Data from Reuters and MarketWatch
Douglas A. McIntyre
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