Housing Hit Hard, Stocks Slip, Amex TARPed

  • December 23, 2008
  • David Goodboy

A lackluster, price swinging day in the stock market. Nasty news from the housing sector pushed stocks lower on the close with the DJIA slipping -100.28 to 8,419.49, the Nasdaq gave back -10.81 to 1521.54 and the broad based S&P 500 dropped -8.47 to 863.16.

American Express
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American Greetings
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AM |
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PowerRating) – Fell hard 34.93% or $3.43 to $6.39/share after announcing 3rd quarter profits falling way short of analyst’s estimates.

General Motors
(
GM |
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Red Hat
(
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PowerRating) – The Linux software company added 8.69% or $1.04 to $13.01/share after crushing analysts EPS estimates by 46%.

Oil slipped below $40.00 to $39.03, gold dropped $9.10 to $838.10 and the VIX eased ahead by 1.03% to 45.02.

Market Snapshot

Dow

 -100.28 8,419.49

NASDAQ

 -10.81 1,521.54

S&P 500

 -8.47 863.16

Economic
News

Chain Deflator-Final (Q3): Consensus 4.2%, Prior 4.2%

GDP-Final (Q3): Consensus -0.5%, Prior-0.5%

Existing Home Sales (Nov): Consensus 4.93M, Prior 4.98M

Mich Sentiment-Rev. (Dec): Consensus 58.6, Prior 59.1

New Home Sales (Nov): Consensus 420K, Prior 433K

Durable Orders (Nov): Consensus -3.1%, Prior -6.2%

Initial Claims (Dec 20): Consensus NA, Prior 554K

Personal Income (Nov): Consensus 0.0%, Prior 0.3%

Personal Spending (Nov): Consensus -0.8%, Prior -1.0%

Crude Inventories (Dec 20): Consensus NA, Prior NA

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