Obama, OPEC: Thursday's Headlines

(

Updated with jobless claims data, Lululemon earnings

.)

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- Here are the top stock market headlines for the morning of Thursday, September 10, 2009.

Thursday's Early Headlines

• Obama Pitches Health Care Reform to Congress. - President Obama addressed Democrats and Republicans during a joint session of Congress late Wednesday, offering his own plan for sweeping change to the U.S. health care system. Obama gave his plan, which includes a public insurance option, a price tag of $900 billion over 10 years, and said funding could come from cutting wasteful spending from medicare. Obama also sought to debunk what he called myths about health care reform, including the so-called "death panels." Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, pushed back against the President during his speech, at one point blurting out "You lie!" when Obama addressed concerns of giving insurance to illegal aliens. Health-care stocks like UnitedHealth Group (UNH) - Get Report, Aetna (AET) and WellPoint (WLP) were mixed ahead of Thursday's open following the President's tough rhetoric.
• OPEC Holds Output Steady. - The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed that production quotas would remain unchanged, according to Qatar's oil minister Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah. OPEC's output target, set in December, is about 25 million barrels of oil a day. Crude was lately trading higher, up 25 cents to $71.56 a barrel after topping $72 earlier.
• Weekly Jobless Claims Fall. - The Labor Department said initial jobless claims fell to 550,000 last week from a revised 576,000 claims the week before. Continuing claims remained above the critical 6 million level, although they did fall to 6.08 million from 6.24 million, a sharper decline than economists anticipated.
• FDIC Set to Pull Debt Guarantee for Banks. - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will end its emergency debt-guarantee program for banks, saying it is considering either letting the debt-guarantee program expire on Oct. 31, or continuing it until April for "emergency" purposes. "As domestic credit and liquidity markets appear to be normalizing and the number of entities utilizing the Debt Guarantee Program (DGP) has decreased, now is an important time to make clear our intent to end the program," FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair said in a statement. Banks including Citigroup (C) - Get Report and Bank of America (BAC) - Get Report, as well as companies like General Electric (GE) - Get Report, have all benefitted from the program.
• GM's Plans for Opel Expected Today. - Dow Jones Newswires reports that General Motors is expected to hold a press conference today on the fate of its Opel unit, ending months of suspense for bidders RHJ International and Magna International (MGA) - Get Report. The press conference comes after a two-day meeting by GM's board of directors. Some reports suggest that GM could end up keeping the Opel division.
• Daiwa, SMFG End Investment Banking Venture. - Bloomberg reports that Japanese brokerage Daiwa Securities will pay about 200 billion yen ($2.2 billion) to buy out partner Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, ending their 10-year-old investment banking venture.
• Orangina Relaxes, Makes it Suntory Time. - Japanese beverage company Suntory is in talks to acquire European drink maker Orangina from Blackstone (BX) - Get Report and Lions Capital, according to several reports. Perhaps not long from now, you can drink an Orangina and mutter Bill Murray's line from Lost in Translation.
• Energy Department Report to Show Declines in Crude, Gas. - Investors will get the latest Energy Department weekly inventory report at 10:30 a.m. EDT, delayed one day due to the Labor Day holiday. Crude oil inventories likely fell by 1.6 million barrels last week and gasoline inventories should decrease by 1.5 million barrels, a Bloomberg survey of analysts shows. Distillate stockpiles probably increased 875,000 barrels, according to the Bloomberg survey.

Thursday's Earnings Roundup

• Lululemon Athletica (LULU) - Get Report posted second-quarter earnings of 13 cents a share, better than the consensus of 10 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters. Sales rose 14.3% from a year ago to $97.7 million, also better than expectations. The company also issued third-quarter earnings guidance that was in line with forecasts and revenue guidance that was above consensus.
• Texas Instruments (TXN) - Get Report late Wednesday said it now expects third-quarter earnings to be in a range of 37 cents to 41 cents a share, up from the prior guidance of 29 cents to 39 cents a share. TI also upped its revenue guidance for the third quarter.