Stock Market Recap: Stocks Down, Home Depot Reports Painful Profits Hit

US stock indexes collapsed across the board today on credit losses and inflation fears. The DJIA fell -199.48 to 12828.68, the S&P500 gave back -13.21 to 1413, and the NASDAQ dipped -23.83 to 2492.26. It was the DJIA’s most precipitous decline in 5 weeks.

Home Depot
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lost 5.37% or $1.55/share on a whopping 66% decline in first quarter profits. This was the home improvement retailers steepest decline in 5 years.

Humana Inc.
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gained 7.28% or $3.34/share to $48.09 making it the S&P 500 largest gainer today. This was in response to being added to Goldman’s “conviction buy” list.

Saks Inc.
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dropped 6.58% or .93 cents/share to $13.20 after first quarter profits missed some analysts estimates on discounts for woman’s clothing.

NetFlix Inc.
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grew 2.10% or .65 cents/share to $31.63 when Lehman Brothers increased its ratings to “overweight”.

The VIX gained 3.35% to 17.58, the US Dollar fell against the Euro to 1.5565 and Crude oil hit another record rising $2.32 to $129.04 on the Boone Pickens $150.00/barrel projection and falling dollar.

Market Snapshot

Dow

-199.48 12,828.68

NASDAQ

-23.83 2,492.26

S&P 500

-13.23 1,413.40

Economic
News

Leading Indicators (Apr): Actual 0.1%, Consensus 0.0%

Core PPI (Apr): Consensus 0.2%, Prior 0.2%

PPI (Apr): Consensus 0.4%, Prior 1.1%

Crude Inventories (Apr): Consensus NA, Prior 176K

Retail Sales ex-auto (Apr): Consensus 0.2%, Prior 0.1%

Initial Claims (05/17): Consensus 372K, Prior 371K

Existing Home Sales (Apr): Consensus 4.85M, Prior 4.93M