Dow Watch: Bank of America's a Drag
Updated from 3:27 p.m. EDT
No Winners Here
(
At 5:50 p.m. EDT
)
Glad that's over. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
plunged Monday, as every one of its stocks retreated. We've not seen a day this bad since early March.
All told, the index dropped 289.60 points, or 3.6%, to 7841.73 and in the process lost $106 billion in market capitalization. The decline, which ended a three-session winning streak, also cut its gain for the month to 3.1% and pushed the year-to-date loss to 10.7%.
From a percentage standpoint,
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
, down 24.3% to $8.02, and
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
, off 19.5% to $2.94, were the worst performers. On a point basis,
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) - Get Report
and
American Express
(AXP) - Get Report
were the biggest problems, together accounting for roughly 50 points of the overall decrease.
After the close,
IBM
(IBM) - Get Report
, and the report wasn't doing much to help out the shares. Profits were better than expected, but sales missed estimates. Recently, the stock was down 1.6% to $98.86.
So the sellers won the day, quite easily, in fact. We'll see if they can again tomorrow, when five Dow components are set to report their results --
Caterpillar
(CAT) - Get Report
,
DuPont
(DD) - Get Report
,
Merck
(MRK) - Get Report
,
United Technologies
and
Coca-Cola
(KO) - Get Report
.
And It's Cold and Raining
(
At 3:10 p.m. EDT
)
Ugly day out there in New York. Stocks aren't doing very well, either.
Right, I shouldn't talk about the weather at a time like this. So the
Dow
starts the week with a good old fashioned selloff. Recently it was down 270 points, or 3.3%, to 7852. Not good.
All 30 stocks were in the red, and
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
remained the worst, off 22.4% to $8.23.
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
had it almost as bad, falling 20.3% to $2.91.
Not much to really be happy about, except maybe for the fact that the session low was 7844, so we're a few points above that.
Now That's a Problem
(
At 10:11 a.m. EDT
)
As expected, the
Dow
is off to a terrible start this week. About 40 minutes into the session, it was near its low of the day, down 187 points at 7944. Financials and
GM
(GM) - Get Report
were the weakest on a percentage basis.
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
was having the worst morning, dropping 13.2% to $9.20 amid concerns about
.
Despite bright spots in the latest numbers, CEO Ken Lewis noted in a prepared statement that the bank continues "to face extremely difficult challenges primarily from deteriorating credit quality driven by weakness in the economy and growing unemployment." And the sellers went crazy.
Meanwhile,
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
has reportedly gotten three bids for its Japanese brokerage
, but it also had its
at Barclays. Its shares were down 11.8% at $3.22.
Elsewhere,
American Express
(AXP) - Get Report
was losing 8.4% to $19.98, and GM was plunging 11.3% to $1.65.
Four stocks,
Procter & Gamble
(PG) - Get Report
,
Johnson & Johnson
(JNJ) - Get Report
,
Merck
(MRK) - Get Report
and
Kraft
(KFT)
were managing to escape the selling and post modest gains.
Here's something that isn't quite as depressing. For those of you who like lists,
Exxon Mobil's
(XOM) - Get Report
back at the top of the
, replacing another Dow stock,
Wal-Mart
(WMT) - Get Report
.
The top three -- the third being
Chevron
(CVX) - Get Report
-- and seven of the first 10 are part of the industrial average.
No Help From Mergers This Time
(
At 9:05 a.m. EDT
)
IBM
(IBM) - Get Report
, you're off the hook. You don't have to feel bad now at all.
With
Oracle
(ORCL) - Get Report
Sun
(JAVA)
, you can go ahead and dispense with any residual doubt you might have had about not pursuing this deal.
Speaking of Oracle-Sun, that was only one of a series of mergers announced or proposed as the new week arrived.
PepsiCo
(PEP) - Get Report
is offering to
, and
GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK) - Get Report
set plans for a
of Stiefel Laboratories.
Yes, I know Pepsi and Glaxo aren't part of the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
. The reason I bring them up is that M&A often leads to up days for the market. Been that way for years. So far, that isn't happening. Recently, Dow futures were down more than 100 points.
As we know, the beginning of a session often has little to do with the end. At the moment though, the sellers appear to be in charge.
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
was part of the problem.
It had some good.
It also some bad, and its shares were down 7.7% in the premarket.
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
was falling 7.1%.
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) - Get Report
was off more than 3%.
Remember, too, that the vast majority of Mondays in 2009 have
. So we'll see.
