Today was somewhat tiring -- there was no real direction and the media was competing for any broad stories with meat to them. Selling picked up at the end of the day and broke a three-day run. The US trade deficit came in narrower than expected and oil prices came down another $1.00+ to well under $114 per barrel. While there was more negative news in financial stocks, today's drumming may have been more analyst driven than on other days where large drops were seen. As you will see, bond yields came down sharply today.Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:
DJIA 11,642.47 (-1.19%)
S&P500 1,289.59 (-1.20%)
NASDAQ 2.430.61 (-0.38%)
10 YR T-Note 3.918% (-0.08%)
Top Analyst Upgrades
Top Analyst Downgrades
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) rose on two separate analyst calls. It was started as "Outperform" in news coverage at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers also reiterated an "Outperform" rating. Shares were up almost 25 at $176.48 in today's final minutes.
Capstone Turbine Corp. (NASDAQ: CPST) managed to rack up gains despite fears over cautious earnings. The company had a single order that accounted for this and racked up another gain to its backlog. Shares were up 7.5% at $2.61 in today's final minutes. Here are the Q&A comments from the conference call.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) saw shares hot after it took two downgrades and an additional estimate cut and as shares broke under key support levels. Shares were down 6% at $167.28 in today's final minutes of trading.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) felt the wrath of analyst research today as Dick Bove at Ladenberg Thalmann downgraded this stock mid-day by cutting estimates and targets. Shares were down over 10% at $37.31 in the final minutes of trading.
VeraSun Energy Corp. (NYSE: VSE) managed to significantly beat its earnings projections at $0.16 EPS vs. $0.02 estimates. Shares were up 8.5% at $7.63 in today's final minutes.
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