Daily Wrap
DJIA -9.53 (-0.06%) to 15,238.59;S&P 500 -0.57 (-0.03%) to 1,642.81;NASDAQ -0.38 (-0.01%) to 2,990.49
Coming off last week’s action the market chose to use today to consolidate. It started with a strong gap higher that immediately sold off and then again rallied near the morning’s highs and this was all before noon EST. After roughly 12:30 pm EST, the market drifted lower and closed off but closer to the lows of the day than the highs. After such a stong move, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more consolidation for the days to come.
News of the day included Apple Computers (AAPL) which kicked off the Worldwide Developers Conference. Take away so far seemed to be nothing overwhelming and frankly maybe a little under. Even before WDC there was an expectation AAPL would announce a streaming music service and today that became reality with Tim Cook’s unveiling of “iTunes Radio”. Pandora (P) previously had an adverse reaction to the leak but today after the reality the stock was able to close up nearly 2.5%.
Another big name in the news was Booz Allen (BAH) which confirmed that 29 year old Edward Snowden has been an employee of BAH for the last 3 months. As would be expected they also stated this is not the BAH way and will work closely to with investigators on the matter.
Worth noting is also the move in Canadian Solar (CSIQ) which has been a hot stock since the beginning of the year and they closed up another 15.45% today on news of an over $300M agreement for construction of a solar power plant.
Big name or not, I always look for a merger on a Monday. Today we saw KapStone Paper (KS) announce a deal to acquire privately held Longview Fibre Paper and Packaging for $1.025B. Also in merger news StellarOne (STEL) agreed to be acquired by Union First Market (UBSH) for $19.50 per share which represents a roughly 20% premium to Friday’s close.
The following noteworthy companies are scheduled to report earnings before tomorrow’s open: MDCI, NTSC, LDK
In analyst notes today, WABCO (WBC) was upgraded to Buy at Goldman with an $89 price target. CyrusOne (CONE) was upgraded to Strong Buy at Raymond James and Facebook (FB) was upgraded to Buy at Stifel with $29 price target. On the downside, CVR Energy (CVI) was downgraded to Sell at Goldman with $56 price target. Some of these and other upgrades and downgrades for the day can be found each morning when I post my 9 @ 9 in the Upgrades/Downgrades section.