Today was a light economic day, and the tone was essentially nothing but profit taking the whole day. The markets opened weak and stayed weak all day, except in technology stocks on NASDAQ. Banks were the big losers today on waves and waves of financial firms doing dilutive capital raises. Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:
Dow 8,421.08 -153.57 (-1.79%)
S&P 500 909.60 -19.63 (-2.11%)
Nasdaq 1,731.24 -7.76 (-0.45%)
Top Analyst Upgrades
Top Analyst Downgrades
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) filed a supplemental prospectus indicating it was about to unload a large debt offering, although it is believed that this was to cheaply finance a huge stock buyback rather than for an acquisition. Shares were up 0.3% at $19.50 late in the day.
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) was one of today's losers as it filed to sell some $7+ billion in securities. Its shares were down 5% at $26.72 on the offering.
Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF) was also in the banks filing and its shares were down over 11% late in the day at $27.76. This was just voted as not needing to raise capital in the stress test results, so they punished the stock regardless of what the money was for.
DryShips. Inc. (NASDAQ: DRYS) was the epitome of what can go wrong in a market. There was a "sell" in a downgrade that was widely reported this morning, although this was actually a "regurgitated analyst call" from Friday morning. The main culprit may have been on falling tanker rate prices for oil tankers. Shares were down 15% at $6.76 very late in the day.
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