Results tagged “stocks”

U.S. stock markets fell over 3% today— Dow -3.56% (-289.60 points), Nasdaq -3.88%, S&P 500 -4.28%—over fears in the banking sectors. Though Bank of America announced a better-than-expected first quarter profit, CEO Ken Lewis said there are still many credit problems. The market had been gaining over the past six weeks but now an asset manager told Bloomberg News, "We’re going to get a lot of earnings releases this week and by and large they’re going to be disappointing. Besides, we’ve had a very sharp run-up in the market. So I see a period of consolidation now, maybe a week or two of declines."

Yesterday, as the stock markets faltered further, President Obama told the American public that now might just be the time to go in, "Buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it," as he said his policies wouldn't be determined by "day-to-day gyrations of the stock market." The Daily News spoke to some New Yorkers to ask them what they thought of the President's suggestion: One woman said, "I'm not buying any stocks now. [My investments] are sitting in cash. I don't think we hit bottom yet," while another man was also wary, "I lost a lot of my retirement in the stock market." However, one person was bullish, "There are good stocks out there. There are fundamentally sound companies," but then he admitted, "I'm a financial adviser, so it means more business for me."

The Dow and the S&P 500 both closed down about 5% today in a day of heavy losses. The Dow was down 443 points and closed below 9,000 amidst fears of a prolonged recession that even superhero President-elect Obama may be not be able to turn around. "Everything is so dismal right now, it's just an endless flow of bad news and no one wants to buy," despaired equity trader Dave Rovelli, who could really benefit by reading today's heartwarming good news about the Starbucks wedding proposal! CNN reports that investors are fearful about tomorrow's big monthly jobs report. Also, too, October retail sales from the chain stores were mostly "abysmal," the housing market is still collapsing, and even the recent dip in gas prices has not improved consumer spending. "People are realizing that the recession is going to drag on until at least the end of 2009," Rovelli whines. LA LA LA LA Can't hear you, Rovelli! Starbucks wedding proposal! Doggie costumes! Sasha and Malia get a puppy!

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen over 300 points. Per CNBC, "The CBOE Volatility Index, widely viewed as the best gauge of fear in the market, shot up 8 percent to about 38." This comes in spite of news that Citigroup will acquire Wachovia and that lawmakers have an agreement on the bailout plan. The NY Times reports that Federal Reserve "announced a coordinated move with nine other central banks to vastly increase the amount of liquidity in the world financial system." Update, 4:30 p.m.: The stock market had its worst day in two decades, with the House's failure to pass the bailout plan: The Dow fell 7%while the S&P 500 fell by almost 9%.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost over 500 points today, the biggest one-day decline for the Dow since Sept. 17, 2001, when the market reopened for trading after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "You have to throw out the history books because there's really nothing to compare this to," Jim Dunigan, chief investment officer at PNC Advisors, tells CNN. Stephen Leeb, president at Leeb Capital Management, says, "People are panicked but it's not the end of capitalism. This may usher in something worse than what we've seen in terms of the economy, but the companies left standing at the end of this will be OK." Phew! The last half hour of trading saw heavy selling despite Governor Paterson's effort to calm investors by letting faltering insurance company A.I.G. borrow $20 billion from its subsidiaries. And a group of 10 banks have given up to $7 billion each to create a $70 billion lending pool to help smaller institutions.

In the first ten minutes of trading this morning, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped more than 300 points, while the major European stock exchanges sank more than 4 percent, the Times is reporting. What color is your parachute? The nosedive is the unsurprising result of several days of increasingly bad news from investment bank Lehman Brothers, which announced its bankruptcy filing after 158 years in business. Today is the first day of trading since the announcement, which also comes with bad news from AIG and Washington Mutual. Since the first minutes of trading, the Dow had recovering slightly, with American stocks doing a bit better than those in Europe.