Dow Watch: Brutal Day for GM
Updated from 11:43 a.m. EDT
Up Is Better Than Down
(
At 5:15 p.m. EDT
)
Wasn't exactly a big win, but it was a win nonetheless. The
ended a fairly quiet session Tuesday up 50.34 points, or 0.6%, at 8469.11.
The index was down for a good part of the day before it made its way higher in the afternoon.
Of the 30 stocks on the DJIA, 16 rose and 14 pulled back.
Pfizer
(PFE) - Get Report
was the top percentage gainer, up 5.5% to $14.93, while fellow drugmaker
Merck
(MRK) - Get Report
added 2.4% to $24.98.
Coca-Cola
(KO) - Get Report
had the second-best increase, advancing 3.9% to $44.40.
All the financials fell, led by losses of more than 5% in
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
and
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
, though
GM
(GM) - Get Report
, down 20% to $1.15, had the steepest decline.
Hideous. According to various reports, the carmaker hasn't seen these levels since the early 1930s.
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
slipped 1% to $15.21 during regular trading, but after the close CEO Paul Otellini offered encouraging remarks about the level of business activity in the second quarter, and that lifted the shares 3.4% to $15.72.
Could Go Either Way
(
At 11:10 a.m. EDT
)
So far, so flat. The
Dow
started the session higher, and it looked like some of Monday's losses were well on the way to being recovered.
Not so fast. Within minutes of the opening bell, the index pulled back, and recently it was hanging around the flat line. It's been there for some time. Still a long way to go, though.
Most of the 30 components, including the banks, were lower at midmorning, with losers up 19 to 11.
American Express
(AXP) - Get Report
,
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
and
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) - Get Report
were dropping more than 3% each, while
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
was off 1%.
BofA made news on reports it's selling shares in
to raise $7.3 billion. The Charlotte-based bank, you might remember, was told after the stress tests were completed that it needed to come up with nearly $34 billion.
AmEx, meanwhile, got an underperform rating as RBC initiated coverage of the stock, and that was weighing on its shares.
The worst of the industrials, on a percentage basis, was
GM
(GM) - Get Report
, slumping 22% to $1.12. On Monday, CEO Fritz Henderson said bankruptcy was still probable, and now we hear that executives have
in recent days.
Seriously ugly situation for this stock. Just how bad is that price? Apparently,
.
Things were better for
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
. It was up 1.7% to $19.65 after the company said it would sell $3.75 billion in debt. Proceeds will go for general corporate purposes, which could include working capital, capital expenditures, stock buybacks or acquisitions.
As you might expect, the last one seemed to interest people most.
Microsoft already has well above $20 billion in cash, so this sale will give the Windows maker even more ability to make a move, should it choose to. Also not surprisingly, CEO Steve Ballmer didn't much seem interested in
, particularly that his company might be looking at
SAP
(SAP) - Get Report
.
For now, I'll wrap it up by encouraging you to check out what TSC Ratings
has to say about
whether
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ) - Get Report
is better than
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
.
