Weak Data Hit Stocks
05/15/08 - 09:44 AM EDT
Sarina Penn
General Electric (GE Quote - Cramer on GE - Stock Picks), a component of the Dow, was another early gainer, tacking on 0.7% following a report in The Wall Street Journal that the company is considering selling or parting ways with its appliances division. The unit could fetch $5 billion to $8 billion, the report said.
Meanwhile, investors were mulling reports that billionaire investor Carl Icahn -- who was said earlier this week to have begun acquiring large amounts of Yahoo! (YHOO Quote - Cramer on YHOO - Stock Picks) stock -- has lined up 10 possible directors to nominate as replacements for the Internet company's board. Yahoo! shares were up 1.7% in the premarket. Icahn's interest came after Microsoft (MSFT Quote - Cramer on MSFT - Stock Picks) walked away from its merger offer for Yahoo!. Elsewhere, Britain-based bank Barclays (BCS Quote - Cramer on BCS - Stock Picks) lost 3.3% after reporting a $1.94 billion writedown and saying its first-quarter profit had withered from last year. JC Penney (JCP Quote - Cramer on JCP - Stock Picks) said its first-quarter income plunged by 50% from a year earlier, and the retailer predicted that 2008 will be a difficult year. Still, shares were up 1.1%. Among commodities, crude oil was up 66 cents to $124.88 a barrel, and gold futures were off 20 cents at $866.30. The U.S. dollar slipped against both the euro and the yen. Treasury prices were falling. The 10-year note dipped 3/32 in price to yield 3.93%, and the 30-year bond gave up 8/32 in price, yielding 4.63%. Markets abroad were mixed. In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 added 0.9% overnight, but the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong slipped 0.1%. As for European bourses, London's FTSE 100 climbed 0.2%. Germany's Xetra Dax and the Paris Cac, however, lost 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively.
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