The green shoots are getting harder to keep pumping up as it seems that Wall Street is starting to demand some visible improvements rather than the continued notion of just "less-bad" data. The weak manufacturing data today makes it look like the factories are taking a European summer vacation. The good news is that producer inflation has not yet started working itself into the system, based on PPI data. The housing starts looked unbelievably better than estimates, but that was due to apartment projects rather than single-family activity.
Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:
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S&P500
NASDAQ
Top Analyst Calls
Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) was one of the standout gainers today. Flying against yesterday's Obama implications, Sanford Bernstein upgraded the stock and said the negative news is fully reflected in today's share prices. Shares were up almost 4% at $51.31 ahead of the closing bell.
Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) showed that green shoots aren't good enough anymore. The company beat earnings estimates, but on horrible metrics, as no improvement has been seen. Shares were down 7% at $35.85 ahead of the close.
Matrixx Initiatives Inc. (NASDAQ: MTXX) was halted earlier based on a warning letter from the FDA over Zicam cold product sales. This could result in the company losing 40% of its product sales if it cannot remedy the FDA action. Shares were down almost 70% at $5.90 shortly before the close.
News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) is showing that social media isn't all it is cracked up to be. The company is slashing about 30% of its MySpace employees to restructure itself as it loses share and relevance. Shares were down over 3% at $10.72 ahead of the closing bell.
Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) was a brief winner ahead of earnings as Wall Street is deciding the whisper number is getting higher than official consensus for this Thursday's earnings. The company also launched the BlackBerry Tour smart phone for international travelers. Shares were up almost 1% at $81.15 shortly before the close.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-16-2009 @ 4:51PM
Iridium said...
Yesterday the IMF says we are getting a double dip recession and Russia says the Dollar is going to remain the reserve currency. The dollar goes up and oil goes down.
Today the IMF says we are going to get a bigger recovery in a shorter time. Russia decides that it doesn't like the dollar and is going to take reserves in emerging markets.
The world trading market is one big joke. The lunacy is hysterical. What are they going to say tommorow???
How much can we laugh, a little harder and I might die.
6-17-2009 @ 1:10PM
Beltway Greg said...
The Russian are going to take reserves in emerging markets? Well, they need look no further than themselves. Russia is an economic joke. Sure, I'll call that bluff. And of course they just might knowing full well that because of their large arsenal, nuclear arsenal that is, the world will have to rush to their aid if they should stumble or if the emerging markets don't emerge quite the way they thought they would. Americans may make the Chinese smile, but the Russians make them laugh out loud.