Closing Bell: An almost disappointment, sort of... (DNDN, AAPL, GE, C, AMR)

Posted Sep 17th 2009 4:00PM by Jon Ogg
Filed under: Apple Inc (AAPL), General Electric (GE), Citigroup Inc. (C), AMR Corp (AMR)

The recession is over according to Ben Bernanke. Inflation is staying tame. And the Fed just said we all saw our wealth grow in Q2. Yet today the markets gave back. Based upon many key tech shares hitting 52-week highs and then selling off, this was just a day of traders finally locking in some handy trading profits. The DJIA stayed up for much of the day, but the rest of the key indexes came well off of highs and many went negative. This call for DJIA 10,000 still seems much more likely even if the market showed that not every index has to rise every day.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 9,784.22 -7.49 (-0.08%)
S&P 500 1,065.49 -3.27 (-0.31%)
Nasdaq 2,126.75 -6.40 (-0.30%)

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Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ: DNDN) is still seeing buyout rumors run the stock to the stratosphere. Shares of the approval-pending PROVENGE for prostate cancer were up 9.6% at $29.39 on strong volume in call options and shares right before today''s close.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) was one the key techs hitting 52-week highs today, although this was well short of the late 2008 and early 2008 highs of over $200.00. Steve Jobs and friends saw Apple shares up 1.7% at $185.05 right before the closing bell.

General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) played a routine game of give-back as it met with analysts to discuss its technologies and advances it had made. But as no word came on formal guidance or the dividend, traders took profits after a mega-run over the last two weeks. Shares were down 1.5% at $16.64 right before the close.

Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) played rocketeer today. Ahead of the bell, shares were up 5% at $5.42 after it sold $2 billion worth of notes and after Buckingham Research raised its rating to "Accumulate."

AMR Corp. (NYSE: AMR), the parent of American Airlines, surged after news that it has obtained $2.9 billion in new financing and on reports that it is making changes to its flight schedule. AMR shares were up 19% at $8.76 ahead of the closing bell.

Tags: bernanke, DNDN, dow, fed, prostate cancer, ProstateCancer, provenge