Stocks Spiral Down, Dividends Cut, Insurers Surge

By | TradingMarkets.com | July 07, 2009 04:50 PM
Symbols: DFS, WY, PCS, AET

Stocks spiraled downward today due to growing earnings concerns and falling oil prices. Bloomberg reported that 66 companies in the S&P 500 either cut or suspended dividends this year with the second quarter pay out dropping 23.4%. This is the largest decline in 40 years per Howard Silverblatt, a senior analyst at Standard & Poors. Bucking the downward trend, insurance companies rallied on news that the Obama health plan may delay creating a government operated plan. The DJIA dropped -161.27 to 8163.60, the Nasdaq fell -41.23 to 1746.17 and the S&P 500 gave back -17.69 to 881.03.


Aetna ( AET | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) - Climbed along with others in the insurance sector adding 6.31% or $1.54 to $25.95/share on relief that Obama may delay creating a government health plan.


Discover Financial ( DFS | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) - Fell 10.76% or $1.13 to $9.36/share as the struggling credit card issuer said it would offer $500 million dollars of additional shares to raise capital.


Metro PCS ( PCS | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) - Climbed 3.57% or 42 cents to $12.19/share after UBS restated its buy rating.


Weyerhaeuser ( WY | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) - The papermaker fell 7.10% or $2.13 to $27.86 upon cutting its dividend from 25 cents to 05 cents/share.


Oil fell $1.12 to $62.57, Gold climbed $4.80 to $929.10 and the fear index VIX spiked 6.38% to 30.85.


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Market Snapshot
















Dow

-161.27 8163.60










NASDAQ

-41.23 1746.17






S&P 500

-17.69 881.03










Economic
News









ISM Service (Jun): Consensus: 46.0, Prior: 44.0


Crude Inventories (07/03): Consensus: NA, Prior: -3.66M


Consumer Credit (May): Consensus: -$7.5B, Prior: -$15.7B


Initial Claims (07/04): Consensus: NA, Prior: 614K


Wholesale Inventories (May): Consensus: -1.0%, Prior: -1.4%


Export Prices ex-ag. (Jun): Consensus: NA, Prior: 0.3%


Import Prices ex-oil (Jun): Consensus: NA, Prior: 0.2%


Trade Balance (May): Consensus: -$30.0B, Prior: -$29.2B


Mich Sentiment-Prel (Jul): Consensus: 71.0, Prior: 70.8




Read David's latest thoughts on his blog, www.marketsurfer.com
Original publication: July 07, 2009

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