- Rally After Down Day Or Continued Weakness?
- Sour Mood Invades The Street; Here's Why
- Retail Results Just Plain Soft
- How Market Played Out Today
- Commodities "Taking It" On The Chin
- The Good News This Morning
- Why Tuesday Was a Let-Down
- Great Commodity Unwind Picks Up Steam
- Dollar/Euro Highest Since Feb.; Commods Drop
- Bob Pisani's ETF Special Monday
- Foreclosures: Why California, Florida Matter To Rest Of Country
- Video: Sell Your Gold?
- S&P and Nasdaq on track for 5-day losing streak
- See What People Are Saying About... Merrill Downgrade
- A Tale of Two Homebuilders
- Google: Happy Tenth Anniversary--Now What?
- Strategists: Embrace The Fear and Buy!
- Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady On Pay And "Secrecy"
- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell On League And NFL Network
- Surge in Joblessness May Deepen US Housing Slump
- Are We Headed for a Recession? Take Our Poll
- Treasurys Turn Lower After Stocks Pare Losses
- Rising Dollar to Curb Exports: Feldstein
- Nokia Shares Fall on Third-Quarter Warning
- Unemployment Hits 6.1%, Fueling Recession Fears
- Europe Slowdown Worse than US: Goldman
- How China's Bet on US Paper Went Wrong
- Altria in Talks to Buy UST for $10 Billion
More Videos
U.K. markets down 1.5 percent on disappointing results from retailer Marks & Spencer (down 20 percent in the U.K.) and vague concerns that the U.S. slowdown may be spreading to Europe. Yesterday a confluence of events, including comments from AT&T [T
Loading...
()
] about slowing consumer business, and poor commentary from Circuit City [CC
Loading...
()
] and Brinker [EAT
Loading...
()
], added to the poor sentiment.
Elsewhere:
1) While we are waiting for Alcoa [AA
Loading...
()
] to report after the close, DuPont [DD
Loading...
()
]has already made comments. DuPont raising earnings guidance for fourth quarter 2007 and 2008 (to $3.35-$3.55, from $3.31 to $3.52). Charles Holliday, DuPont CEO, was on our air a short while ago. He noted strong growth in agricultural business--23 percent of sales are in seeds or chemicals into agriculture. Housing? He notes there has been a recession in U.S. housing for five quarters, have not seen an improvement, and are not counting on one for 2008.
He notes price increases have been holding. 34 percent of sales come from products less than 5 years old. Dupont sells seed for corn and soybeans. Talked about making ethanol from cellulose.
But Alcoa and DuPont, while both materials companies, are not the same. Alcoa has more sales in the U.S. (56 percent vs. 41 percent in 2006), and Alcoa does not have DuPont's Agriculture and Nutrition division, which is where the fastest growth is.
2) Countrywide [CFC
Loading...
()
] , on the heels of an awful day yesterday on no news, said that mortgage loan fundings rose 1 percent in December compared to the prior month, stronger than expected.
3) Bond insurer MBIA is raising more capital--$1 billion to be exact. They are cutting their dividend more than 60 percent (to $0.52 a share), which will save about $80 million a year. The rest will be raised by issuing more debt. Stock hit hard yesterday on comments from an analyst at Morgan Stanley that future profits would be worse than already lowered expectations.
Questions? Comments?
Del.icio.us
Digg It
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes