Late Friday, Sirius XM Radio (SIRI) expanded the size of its planned senior notes offering from $550 million to $800 million. The sale of senior notes due 2015 was conducted via private placement, with the notes bearing an annual interest rate of 8.75%. Stakeholder Liberty Media (LCAPA) was slated to buy $150 million of the notes.

The offering is intended to provide Sirius the ability to prepay, in full, all of its borrowings under a senior secured term loan that matures in 2012. The satellite radio company will also redeem notes due 2013, and finance the fees and expenses related to the notes offering.

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

Within the past year, the stock price of Alcoa (NYSE: AA), a mega aluminum producer, has gone from a high of $44.78 to a low of $4.97. Although, during the past few weeks, things have perked up. In fact, yesterday Alcoa's stock price surged 17% to $6.40.

The reason? Alcoa was able to drum up interest in its recent financing. In all, the company raised $1.3 billion in stock and convertible notes. Keep in mind that Alcoa expected to raise $1.1 billion.

In the aftermarket, the trading of the new securities was robust -- which certainly delighted traders.

Analyst Phil Weiss of Argus Research is none too impressed with the recent debt offering by Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE: CHK). The natural gas concern on Wednesday sold $1 billion in six-year notes, with proceeds going toward outstanding indebtedness under CHK's credit facility. The offer was hiked from its initial planned value of $500 million.

Additionally, Chesapeake said it "anticipates reborrowing [under its revolving bank credit facility] from time to time to fund drilling and leasehold acquisition initiatives and for general corporate purposes." It seems the commodity firm is growing steadily more cavalier with its balance sheet -- CHK ended the fiscal year with just $1.75 billion in cash, compared to its December forecast of $2.5 billion.