Carl Icahn Is On The Move–Look What He’s Doing Now

A late-day rally stopped a 100-point loss in the Dow
after billionaire investor
Carl Icahn
announced he owns 10 million shares of Rite Aid
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and also disclosed he has 4.5 million shares of Siebel Systems
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,
as well as a position in Hewlett Packard
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; he also said he is
raising his stake in Imclone
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and was selling his stakes in
Aon

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and Temple Inland
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. Finally, Icahn said he
increased his holdings in Ladenburg to 6.3 million shares.

Economic data was mixed. Import prices
for April rose 0.8%, twice the estimate; import prices rose 0.6%. The University
of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index for May was 85.3 vs. 87.7 in April. The
number was worse than the 88.0 consensus.

The Nasdaq is canceling pre-open trades in 1600 stocks–mostly thinly
traded, but includes JetBlu-JBLU–because of a market participant system
problem pre-open. Check with your broker to see if any of your trades were affected.

Dell (DELL)
reported 0.37, in-line; revenues were in-line.  The stock was
upgraded at UBS.

Kohl’s (KSS)
missed by a penny but reaffirmed guidance.

Nvidia (NVDA)
beat by 0.08. Revenue rose 24%.

Prudential raised Intel’s price target to $29. Smith Barney reduced
estimates at brokers GS, LEH and MWD.

Taser
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is in focus after a study showed that Taser gun
usage had little effect on human heart function.

Friday the 13th: good or bad for the market? A study showed that
Friday the 13th outperforms the average Friday. In a study of Fridays from 1955
to 2005, Michael Panzner of Rabo Securities showed that Friday the 13th was up
56.63% of the time, while the typical Friday was higher just 53% of the time.

Strong sectors were:  Semis 
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+2.82%  
Computer Technology 

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+1.82%   Software 
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+1.17%   

Weak sectors were:  Healthcare Providers
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-2.70%   
Natural Gas

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-1.62%   Oil
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-1.66%    

Dow -50.10 10,139.38
Nasdaq +12.71 1976.59
S&P 500 -5.36 1154.00

The dollar was +0.61 at
86.12

Crude Oil was +0.06 at
50.25

Gold was -1.40 at 419.80

ce=”Arial” size=”2″ face=”Arial”>Volume was 1.72 billion on the NYSE and
1.86 billion on the Nasdaq.

Market breadth was negative.

NYSE Issues
Advancing 1034 Up Vol 1422
Declining 2230 Down Vol 1748
2.15 1.22
Nasdaq
Advancing 582 Up Vol 1235
Declining 1381 Down Vol 515
2.37 2.39

Stocks in the News

Dupont
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was raised at JP Morgan.

Valero
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was raised at Citigroup and Smith Barney.

Tiffany
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beat estimates by 0.03. US retail sales rose 14%. In
Japan, comp store sales fell 10%.

Maytag
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slashed its dividend to 0.09 from 0.18.

Google’s CEO said the company will not split the stock for now.

Ameritrade
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sees lackluster market performance and said
investors are waiting for economic conditions to improve.

Delphi
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missed by a wider margin, reporting (0.68) vs (0.31)
expected. The company also guided lower.

Brice Wightman

 

 

 

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