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Cramer on BloggingStocks: Pelosi can't kill the health care sector

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the Senate is filled with more-savvy politicians, and the upside for beaten-down names is huge.

Nancy Pelosi has now said her piece. The most unpopular Speaker of the House in the history of Wall Street has gotten her precious health care legislation through the House after ramming through a stimulus package that had far too little infrastructure and far too much pay raise for municipal and state workers, the most powerful interest group in the country.

But this time the Senate sees through it, and the politicians -- despite Pelosi's insistence that Tuesday's election went her way -- know better. There are pages after pages after pages in this bill that look threatening. But here's the rub: This bill's public option, the one that is supposed to be a killer to everything health care, should affect no more than 6 million people over a 10-year period, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In order to get 60 votes in the Senate, even that may prove to be too powerful an option.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Pelosi can't kill the health care sector

Cramer on BloggingStocks: All I'm asking for is rigor

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says you can be bearish, but you have to admit when you're wrong.

Oh boy, I hit a nerve. My last two days of donning the bear suit and imitating the bears has brought on a cacophony of critics, all of whom think that I am attacking them personally! That's right, they think I have read them, seen them and heard them and that I am spoofing them or making fun of them.

Moreover, they think that I am wildly bullish and that I am mocking them for not wanting to buy things here.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: All I'm asking for is rigor

Cramer on BloggingStocks: Stunning elections put health care names back in play

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says stocks like WellPoint are buys again because the months of rhetoric will end.

Buy WellPoint (NYSE: WLP) (Cramer's Take). Right now. That's what I thought the moment I saw Chris Christie's shocking triumph in my home state last night. It was a stunning referendum of the anti-jobs nature of health care and how the Democrats are now being tagged with job losses and a health care obsession that hurts hiring.

Not everyone has a seat as safe as Nancy Pelosi. Many have seats thought to be as safe as Corzine's. They have to be shaking today.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Stunning elections put health care names back in play

Earnings highlights: Aflac, Avon, BP, Hershey, Kellogg, Nintendo, P&G, Sprint ...

Here are some highlights from last week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

Continue reading Earnings highlights: Aflac, Avon, BP, Hershey, Kellogg, Nintendo, P&G, Sprint ...

Aetna, Aflac, WellPoint rise following earnings releases

Even as the battle over health care reform rages on Capitol Hill, we are seeing a flurry of third quarter reports from insurers.

Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) reported Thursday that its third-quarter profit rose 18% from a year ago to $308.2 million, or $0.69 per share, topping Wall Street's expectations. Revenue came in at $8.72 billion, versus the consensus of $8.68 billion. Aetna also said share repurchases totaled 3.9 million at a cost of $114 million in the third quarter of 2009.

Continue reading Aetna, Aflac, WellPoint rise following earnings releases

Consider Express Scripts, unless you think health care reform will lead to fewer Americans with insurance

I'm Reiterating my Buy rating for Express Scripts (NASDAQ: ESRX), first recommended on June 9, 2009 at a price of $63.64, and the reason isn't the stuff of rocket science.

An aging populace, plus a likely renewed emphasis on health and wellness in the United States, and the probability of federal health care reform legislation bodes well for many health care players, including pharmacy benefits managers like ESRX. If you bought the shares on June 9, you're up about 20%.

Continue reading Consider Express Scripts, unless you think health care reform will lead to fewer Americans with insurance

Analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations: ADBE, GIS, MAR, S, TTWO, VZ ...

Analyst upgrades:

  • Deutsche Bank upgraded Garmin (NASDAQ: GRMN) to Hold from Sell as it believes the company's second half of 2009 is tracking better than expected due to retailer restocking. Deutsche raised its target on shares to $33 from $15 but thinks Garmin's long-term trends remain unfavorable.
  • Goldman upgraded Fortune Brands (NYSE: FO) to Buy from Neutral citing potential EPS improvement driven by the Home division. Fortune Brands price target to $49 from $45. Note that the firm downgraded General Mills to Neutral from Buy.
  • Oppenheimer upgraded FPIC Insurance (NASDAQ: FPIC) to Outperform from Perform to reflect the company's acquisition of Advocate MD and management's commitment to share repurchases. The firm set a $49 price target on the stock.
  • PPG Industries (NYSE: PPG) and Olin Corp. (NYSE: OLN) were upgraded to Neutral from Sell at UBS.
  • Synovus (NYSE: SNV) was upgraded to Neutral from Underperform at BofA/Merrill.
  • Take-Two (NASDAQ: TTWO) was upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at Piper Jaffray.

Continue reading Analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations: ADBE, GIS, MAR, S, TTWO, VZ ...

Reconciliation is a nasty word for healthcare stocks (UNH, WLP and HUM)

Unless you've been spending your summer vacation on a tropical beach with no television or internet access, you have seen that the public reception to Congress' proposals for heathcare reform have not exactly been well accepted. I mean, nut jobs showing up to town hall meetings with guns strapped to their legs isn't really the norm.

So you would think that the Republicans who are against a public insurance plan are in control, right? Not so fast.

Congressional Democrats are now talking about splitting the healthcare bills into two parts so they can take advantage of a loophole called reconciliation.

Continue reading Reconciliation is a nasty word for healthcare stocks (UNH, WLP and HUM)

Cramer on BloggingStocks: The health care bargain

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says health care has never been this cheap relative to the market in its history.

Health care's not done rallying. As President Obama prepared himself for claiming a great political victory, we are all recognizing that the single-payer, socialized medicine covering cradle-to-grave, 100% paid for by the rich, the fear that left all things health care in the P/E dustbin, is dead. That's not going to happen.

That leaves us with the biggest bargains the market has to offer.

Health care has never been this lowly valued relative to the market in its history. Remember, 98% of the time it trades at a meaningful premium. I think that many believe some of these moves (like the Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) (Cramer's Take) move) is because of gigantic new drug finds. In fact, I think they just got too cheap and the only thing really meaningful about the Celgene rally came because one of its Revlimid studies was stopped for good results, actually a predictable event given how well the drug works on many different kinds of cancers.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: The health care bargain

Cramer on BloggingStocks: No worries at JPMorgan

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the bank has the least to worry about and can gain from new federal regulation.

Sometimes you just have to step back from the small-picture hubbub and make some assumptions about the new landscape if legislation passes.

If you look at the health care legislation you know that it is going to cut out some profitability for companies that have relied on the government for big profits, which means the companies that have the most Medicare exposure. So you go with the health maintenance company with the least Medicare exposure -- WellPoint (NYSE: WLP) (Cramer's Take). It simply can't get hit as badly as a Humana (NYSE: HUM) (Cramer's Take) or a UnitedHealth (NYSE: UNH) (Cramer's Take) because it doesn't have the exposure.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: No worries at JPMorgan

Closing Bell: A win that felt too quiet (BRK-A, BAC, CCL, SNDK, SLM, WLP)

Today was one of those low news flow days where you never had any real solid feel for where the market would close until the very end of the session. We have seen too many rallies dashed by closing imbalances at the end of the day when there was thin volume.

Some Philly Fed data helped hold the market, and that was on the heels of the largest drop in continuing jobless claims since 2001. Some of the agriculture stocks staged a small comeback after yesterday's huge losses.

Here were the unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,554.77 +57.59 (0.68%)
S&P 500 918.34 +7.63 (0.84%)
Nasdaq 1,807.72 -0.34 (-0.02%)

Top Analyst Upgrades
Top Analyst Downgrades

Continue reading Closing Bell: A win that felt too quiet (BRK-A, BAC, CCL, SNDK, SLM, WLP)

Cramer on BloggingStocks: Don't fight the Obama phalanx

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says there'll be a time to buy health care. But wait until the smoke clears.

Please don't tell me we are back in the world of no institutional memory again. That all that happened is we dropped enough points to freak everyone out, get the bears out of hibernation and then it is onward and upward. Nothing would shock me, especially the vehemence with which everyone hated the market again Monday.

If you replay what happened, most of the issues stemmed from statements made by the same Europeans that have said no more stimulus is needed, the same Europeans who have been in denial the whole way publicly, but believe me they have been stimulating like mad because their banks are a much larger size relative to their gross domestic product than ours and are in many ways worse off.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Don't fight the Obama phalanx

Analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations: GLW, A, BHP, MJN, AET ...

Analyst upgrades:
  • Citigroup upgraded shares of Corning (NYSE: GLW) to Buy from Hold as it believes LCD glass production and sales have bottomed and will pick-up in Q2. The firm raised its target price to $16 from $11.25.
  • Thomas Weisel upgraded Celera (NASDAQ: CRA) to Overweight from Market Weight based on valuation and its strong business model.
  • ThinkEquity upgraded Varian Semi (NASDAQ: VARI) to Buy from Accumulate and raised its target to $32 from $20 based on valuation and weakness at its sole competitor.
  • Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) was upgraded to Hold from Underperform at Jefferies.
  • Agilent (NYSE: A) was raised to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse.
  • Liberty Interactive (NASDAQ: LINTA) was upgraded at JP Morgan to Neutral from Underweight.

Continue reading Analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations: GLW, A, BHP, MJN, AET ...

Stocks in the news: YHOO, T, BA, WFC, JAVA, XOM, GE, TGT, BBY, UPS ...

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) managed to actually beat estimates and shares traded 5.7% higher in premarket. While the internet portal company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $303 million, it actually withstood the recession better than analysts had expected as excluding charges it would have earned 17 cents per share, better than the 13 cents per share estimated by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Revenue matched analyst estimates. New CEO, Carol Bartz, can now fully take control. By 11 am, YHOO shares gained 7%.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) said fourth-quarter profit fell 23% to $2.4 billion, or 41 cents per share. This despite higher wireless sales -- revenue rose 2.4% to $31.1 billion -- as it paid high subsidies to support Apple Inc's (NASDAQ: AAPL) popular iPhone and traditional phone users disconnected their service. Excluding items earnings fell to 64 cents a share from 71 cents a share. Results were roughly inline with estimates. Shares were 4.3% higher in premarket trading. By 11 am, T shared declined 2%.

Continue reading Stocks in the news: YHOO, T, BA, WFC, JAVA, XOM, GE, TGT, BBY, UPS ...

An unimaginable day of layoffs

Yesterday, several of America's largest and most well-know companies cut people at an alarming rate. The liquidation of Circuit City could put a total of 30,000 employees onto the street. Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) cut 2,400 sales people. AMD (NYSE: AMD) cut more than 1,000 people. Hertz (NYSE: HTZ) said it will let 4,000 people go, and Wellpoint (NYSE: WLP) will fire more than 1,000 people.

Bloomberg reported that GE (NYSE: GE) might fire up to 11,000 people in its financial unit.

So, in one day, as many as 60,000 people were out of work. A look at the activity shows why it will be so hard to arrest the drop in jobs. The companies involved in downsizing yesterday range from big pharma to transportation to tech to retail. The 24 hours were, in essence, a cross-section of the entire American economy suffering under the weight of the recession.

Economists say there cannot be a recovery with a reversal of the fall in unemployment. Unfortunately, addressing the cause of joblessness is has moved well beyond saving the retail industry and Detroit. Industry by industry, the entire system has become diseased.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-17.2410,433.71
NASDAQ-6.832,169.18
S&P 500-0.591,105.65

Last updated: November 24, 2009: 11:10 PM

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