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This post was written by CNBC producer Robert Hum
Stocks fell to the lows of the day this afternoon as a couple of issues weighed on the markets.
1) The U.S. dollar weakened after Moody’s warned California’s credit ratings could face a “multi-notch” downgrade if the state legislature can’t agree on a budget soon. These comments come of the heels of a similar warning made by S&P earlier in the week as the state battles its current budget shortfall.
Moody’s cautions that “the state's cash situation will deteriorate to the point where the controller will have to delay most non-priority payments in July” if the state’s $24.3 billion budget crisis isn’t resolved soon. Such a downgrade would make California ineligible for more favorable interest rates, pushing the cash-strapped state’s borrowing costs up.
2) Separately, commodity prices fell to their lows of the day, with notable profit-taking in gasoline, crude oil, and gold, and copper. This took the wind out of the stock market’s earlier leadership groups – materials and energy, which moved into negative territory on the day.
One leadership group that’s holding up again today is healthcare. Several HMO stocks are posting impressive gains for the fourth straight day on continued hopes that significant (and costly) health care reform proposals maybe dying.
Take a look at the performance of various healthcare stocks since Tuesday:
- Cigna [CI
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] up 22% - Health Net [HNT
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] up 19%
- Coventry Health Care [CVH
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] up 18%
- Aetna [AET
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] up 15%
- Humana [HUM
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] up 13%
- UnitedHealth [UNH
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] up 10%
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POPULAR TRADER TALK POSTS
- Risk Trade Is Back On
- This Week's Biggest Story: The Dollar
- Corporate Issuance Continues at Torrid Pace
- The Bernanke Dollar Bounce & Gross Says Forget About Rate Hike
- Colgate Really Sparkles After Hours
- Light Volume Has Traders Complaining
- Gold Shatters Another Record
- Have Retailers Reached Their Limits?
- The Retail Mind Game
- The Gold Rush Is On
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes