Tag Archives: Top Dow

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

See How Verizon Communications Ranks Among Analysts' Top Dow 30 Picks

Leave a comment

By DividendChannel.com

A study of analyst recommendations at the major brokerages shows that Verizon Communications Inc (NYSE: VZ) is the #18 broker pick, on average, out of the 30 stocks making up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, according to ETF Channel. Despite being ranked lower than the median among analyst picks of the Dow, Verizon Communications Inc ranks better than the median among analyst picks for the broader S&P 500 index components, claiming the #234 spot out of 500. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Markets

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Uncertainty in Europe and Slowing Home Sales Pull Markets Lower

Leave a comment

By Matt Thalman, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

It was a mixed bag for the major indexes today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 33 points, or 0.23%, and now sits at 14,526. The S&P 500 closed down just 0.92 points, or 0.06%, and once again remains within striking distance of its all-time closing price of 1,565, currently resting at 1,562. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, managed to close higher today, up 4 points, or 0.12%, even though two of its most-followed stocks, Apple and Google, both closed lower by more than 1%.

There were two macro events that caused stocks to decline today. The first is continued uncertainty and fear from across the Atlantic. The controversial terms of the bailout of Cyprus could cause a bank run not only there but also in other European countries, which themselves may need additional bailouts in the coming months.

The second event was a 0.4% drop in the National Association of Realtors’ pending-home-sales index, which tracks the number of contracts signed every month. This could mean one of two things: Fewer homes were for sale, or there are fewer buyers looking for a home. Investors should keep in mind that this was just one data reading. If the trend continues to show declining sales, increased concern is warranted, but this sing;e lower reading shouldn’t be seen as a big deal.  

Top Dow losers
In the wake of the lower pending-home-sales reading, shares of Home Depot fell by 0.57% today. The store is directly tied to the housing market and lives and dies with its success or failure. But even though home sales dropped 0.4% from January to February in the NAR index, they’re still up 8.2% on a year-over-year basis. Looking at a three-, six-, or 12-month rolling period is a better way to gauge the housing market and determine which direction it’s possibly heading.  

Both the Dow’s telecom stocks also headed lower today. Shares of AT&T lost 0.33% of their value, while Verizon‘s stock declined by 1.09%. Both stocks are heavily shorted and saw more shorts piling on from January to February. AT&T currently has 90.54 million shares out of 5.49 billion shares sold short, while Verizon counts 61.21 million out of 2.86 billion. Both stocks are trading within striking distance of their 52-week highs and may face some serious headwinds from stronger competitors now that a number of smaller players have merged or been acquired.

Lastly, one stock that’s not heavily shorted is Coca-Cola , but shares did close lower by 1.16% today. Only 30.52 million of the 3.83 billion shares available were shorted at the end of February, but the stock still currently ranks as the 19th most shorted Dow component. The stock hit a new 52-week high yesterday, so today’s pull is likely just a matter of investors booking profits.

Coca-Cola’s wide moat has helped provide its shareholders with superior gains in the past, but the company faces some new threats to …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Consumer-Facing Stocks Led the Dow Lower

Leave a comment

By Matt Thalman, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Even though European officials agreed to a bailout for Cyprus, the terms of the agreement raised concerns with investors today. The small island nation will receive 10 billion euros, which will help recapitalize banks there. Well, all but the country’s second-largest bank, which will be shut down. The agreement not only calls for the closure of the bank but depositors with more than 100,000 euros will likely lose a large portion of their money.

The reason a country with a GDP of roughly $22 billion and fewer than 1 million citizens matters is that many fear the bailout model being demonstrated in Cyprus will soon become the model for all European bailouts. That fear could put stress on banks in Spain, Italy, and Greece if citizens begin pulling funds from financial institutions in those countries.  

With all the fear and uncertainty circling the markets today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed lower by 64 points, or 0.44%, and now sits at 14,447. The other major indexes performed slightly better as the S&P 500 closed lower by 0.33% and the Nasdaq dropped 0.3% today.

Top Dow losers
Shares of Walt Disney fell 1% this afternoon on the heels of a report that the board of directors of Hulu was looking for a buyer. Disney and News Corp. own the streaming video service, which has more than 3 million paying subscribers and generated $700 million in revenue last year.

Reports indicate that there are several buyers interested, but as we have seen in the past, if the price is not right, Hulu’s board will reject the offer. In 2011, a buyout offer was rejected. The possibility that Disney and News Corp. would each buy the other out has also been floated.  

McDonald’s also ended the day lower by 1.04%. Business Insider reportedly received a copy of an internal memo today, which paints a defensive picture of the burger king. The memo discusses the initial launch of McDonald’s McWrap, and claims that 22% of customers ages 18-32 would likely eat at Subway if McDonald’s didn’t offer the wrap. The company calls the wrap a “subway buster” and claims that the millennial age group wants variety and options. The wrap supposedly will give customers choices and the ability to customize their meal.

But the most shocking and damaging information for investors was that the memo stated that “McDonald’s was not in the top 10 of millennial’s (age 18-32) favorite restaurants.” This is a large demographic and one that McDonald’s needs to attract if it wants to remain the No. 1 fast-food restaurant for the next 10, 20, 50 years.

Johnson & Johnson lost 0.08% today after it announced a recall for its OneTouch Verio IQ blood glucose meters. The LifeScan unit of J & J, which makes and markets the device, said that at extremely high blood glucose levels, the device shuts off and does not give any warning to the user. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Stocks That Pulled Back as the Dow Pushed Higher

Leave a comment

By Matt Thalman, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average managed to pull itself together today to close up 90 points, or 0.63%, after falling 90 points yesterday. Even though the issues in Europe are still looming (more importantly, in Cyprus), investors focused their attention on all the positive aspects of the economy here at home.

Housing sales and prices continue to rise, purchasing managers sentiment is growing stronger, jobless claims are falling, and the Federal Reserve is going to continue keeping interest rates low and buying bonds for an extended period of time.

But even with all the encouraging data, and the Dow rising almost 100 points, a few of its components still fell into the red today.

Top Dow losers
In an attempt to revitalize its brand, Pepsi rolled out a new bottle yesterday. The No. 2 soft-drink company in the world changed the shape of its 20-ounce bottle for the first time in nearly 17 years. The new features include a shorter label and a different contour to the bottom of the bottle, where one would presumably hold the beverage.  

Shares of Coca-Cola fell 0.07% today, which may be a result of the Pepsi bottle change. The move will likely not affect Coke in the long run, but it certainly has attracted attention from the media outlets. Self-promotion and advertising is really the only way these two companies can fight each other, and it seems Pepsi has won this week.

Cisco dropped 0.43% after a federal jury found the company guilty in a civil case, and ordered it to pay $70 million to XpertUniverse. The two where working toward a potential partnership agreement, but XpertUniverse alleged Cisco strung it along for more than six months before informing Xperts management that the deal had been rejected. Xpert claims Cisco’s actions led to the business failing and had Cisco been up front about its intentions, Xpert could have pursed other partnerships that would have allowed it to continue operating.  

Shares of Travelers dipped 0.07% this afternoon. The stock had recently hit a new 52-week high and been on quite the run over the past three months. Year to date, shares are up 16.53%, making it the second best-performing Dow component in 2013. Furthermore, my Fool colleague Anders Bylund recently noted that over the past 12 months, it is the top-performing component, gaining 44% and almost 200 points to the Dow. Anders also has a great graph showing the contributions of other Dow components over the same time frame. Check it out by clicking here. 

More foolish insight

Coca-Cola’s wide moat has helped provide its shareholders with superior gains in the past, but the company faces some new threats to its continued market dominance. The Motley Fool recently compiled a premium research report containing everything you need to know about Coca-Cola. If you own or are considering owning shares in the company, you’ll want to click …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Only 6 Dow Components Closed in the Red Today

Leave a comment

By Matt Thalman, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Late this afternoon, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke held a press conference that acted as a catalyst for the markets to push higher. The members of the central bank remain optimistic about the U.S. economy. They believe unemployment will drop to a range of 7.3% to 7.5% by the end of 2013, while projecting economic growth to fall somewhere in the range of 1.3% to 1.7%.  

With that said, the Fed will keep buying bonds and will not raise interest rates until unemployment hits 6.5% or inflation rates climb to 2.5%. Thus, the cheap money train continues and investors jumped aboard. The broad S&P 500 index tacked on 0.67%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq became the winning index of the day, after it closed higher by 0.78%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 55 points, or 0.39%, and only six of the 30 blue-chip stocks ended the trading session lower.

This morning, I discussed the reasons why Caterpillar, JPMorgan Chase, and Verizon were in the red. Below, I talk about why the other three Dow losers were falling today.

Top Dow losers
Shares of Hewlett-Packard closed the day down 0.82% after trading in positive territory nearly the whole day. The late-day drop was likely related to the news that all of the company’s board members had been re-elected. A number of activist investors and shareholders had called for them to be voted off because they sat on the board when Autonomy was purchased. HP recently wrote off more than $8 billion of the $10 billion that it had paid for the software company.  

Shares of Boeing ended the day down 0.16%. The drop may be coming from shortsighted investors who are reading into comments FedEx made this morning. The package delivery company will trim its flight capacity to Asia as customers use cheaper shipping options and not FedEx’s lucrative air freight delivery service. Additionally, FedEx will retire some of its older, less-efficient planes as a way to cut cost.  

The news would indicate that Boeing will likely not be receiving any new orders from FedEx in the near future, which would affect Boeing’s short-term sales prospects. But the fact that FedEx will be retiring its older planes means Boeing will have the opportunity down the road to sell it the more fuel-efficient Dreamliner, if they ever get it working.

And the last of the Dow’s losers today is UnitedHealth , who saw shares fall by 0.29%. As new Medicare payouts and Obamacare are set to take effect in the coming year, the stock has not performed very well in 2013. Year to date, shares are only up 1.18%, making it the third worst-performing Dow component this year, and that comes at a time when the index itself is up 10.74% in 2013. But my Fool colleague Brenton Flynn believes this is one Dow stock with a solid dividend, which will likely continue to grow in the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Dow Starts Another Streak; Problem Is, It's a Losing One

Leave a comment

By Matt Thalman, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended its 10-day winning streak last Friday, when the index closed lower. Today, the Dow continued its losing streak when the closing bell rang and the big board was lower by 62 points. The blue-chip average now sits at 14,452.

Today’s decline was a direct response to the situation in Cyprus. As part of an EU bailout, the small country had to agree to tax the deposit accounts of its citizens. All of the banks within its borders will remain closed until Thursday, as many fear a high possibility of bank runs. Others throughout Europe fear that if this tax is imposed in Cyprus, the whole European banking system may be in jeopardy as banking customers throughout the region, anticipating similar taxes, close their accounts. To learn more details about this unprecedented bailout, click here.

While the Dow’s financial stocks all moved lower on the news, 22 of the index’s 30 components closed lower this afternoon.

Top Dow losers
The Dow’s big technology stocks fell after a report indicating that IT service contracts fell in Q4 of 2012. Ovum, an information technology research firm, said global IT players such as IBM and Cisco struggled through a gloomy end to 2012. While Q4 2012 IT sales were below those of 2011, 2012 full-year sales fell to their lowest level since 2001. 

Considering sales were off this past year, and IBM stock fell by 0.8%, and Cisco’s dropped 1.16% today alone, both companies have experienced decent stock performance over the past few months. Shares of IBM are up 11.31%, while Cisco has risen 10.28%, in line with the Dow’s performance of 10.29%, year to date.

In a surprising twist, shares of Walt Disney fell by 1.3% this afternoon. Weekend box-office sales indicate that Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful took the No. 1 spot both in the U.S. and worldwide. Since its release just two weeks ago, Oz has brought in $281 million, of which Disney takes about half, while the other half goes to the individual theaters. 

Meanwhile, a judge in Missouri approved a $220 million settlement for consumers of the painkiller Vioxx, made by Merck . Back in November, the drug manufacturer settled a lawsuit the night before it went to trial, but a judge needed to review and approve the settlement before it could take effect.

News of the settlement is probably what caused shares of Merck fell by 1.04% today. In the past, eight other class action lawsuits were bought against Merck pertaining to Vioxx, and all of them failed to recover any damages. Since the plaintiffs were successful this time, it may have opened the door for future lawsuits.

Can Merck beat the patent cliff?
This titan of the pharmaceutical industry stumbled into 2013 and continues to battle patent expirations and pipeline problems. Is Merck still a solid dividend play, or should investors be looking elsewhere? In a new …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance