Closing Bell: Housing, consumer confidence deliver lukewarm trading (CIT, C, BAC, ACS, XRX, SQNM & RIMM)

Posted Sep 29th 2009 4:00PM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: After the Bell, Major Movement, Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America (BAC), CIT Group (CIT), Research in Motion (RIMM), Xerox Corp (XRX), S and P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ

Out of the chute this morning, the S&P/Case-Shiller index rose 1.2% in July and gave the market a nice uptick for a while. Then came the report from the Conference Board that its consumer confidence index for September fell to 53.1 from 54.5 in August. What was worse is that economists had estimated a rise to 57 for the month. The soft confidence number is almost certainly due to people worried about losing their jobs. Right now, it could be that traders are waiting for Friday's unemployment report before jumping one way or the other. The negative news won out and the indexes traded down most of the day.

The numbers:

Dow

S&P 500

Nasdaq

The most actively traded stocks once again include the big financial services/investment banks. These guys have money, they're not lending it out much, and even if things go bad, the government will rescue them. What's not to like?

The only bank generating some news today was CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), whose shares jumped about 28% on a report that the bank may merge with IndyMac Federal Bank. Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) was also about 3% to $4.73, and Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) was flat at $17.29.

Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) was gaining back some of the ground it lost yesterday on the announcement of its purchase of Affiliated Consumer Services, Inc. (NYSE: ACS). Following yesterday's drop of about 20%, Xerox was up more than 3% today, to around $7.95.

Today's big loser appears to be Sequenom, Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM) which verified that the company's reported results were invalid for its prenatal test for Down syndrome. The company has fired its President/CEO and its senior VP for R&D among others. Volume is more than six times the daily average, and shares are trading at $3.53, down nearly 40% today. The company's 52-week trading range is $2.86-$28.60.

Research in Motion Limited (NASDAQ: RIMM) was trading up nearly 3% at $68.38 on double its average daily volume. After some wild fluctuations in the past 12 months, the stock was about 10% higher than a year ago after falling from a 52-week high of $88.08.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Tags: BAC, C, CIT, RIMM, SQNM, XRX