FOMC Jitters, Home Builders Nervous, Stocks Down

  • December 15, 2009
  • Brice Wightman

The stock market closed down across the board today. Interest rate jitters due to the FOMC meeting tomorrow and a surprising drop in home builder sentiment led to the decline. The U.S. dollar hit a 2-month high on the same interest rate speculation depressing stocks. Very few economists believe the Fed will raise rates tomorrow. However, fear of future rate increase hints and potential talk of slowing the stimulus injections resulted in the bearish session. The DJIA ended down -49.05 to 10452.00, the Nasdaq gave back -11.05 to 2201.05 and the broad based S&P 500 lost -6.18 to 1107.93.

MetroPCS
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PowerRating): Gained 7.13% or 49 cents to $7.36/share on a Sanford Bernstein upgrade.

News Corp
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PowerRating): Eased higher by 1.12% or 17 cents to $15.29/share after Deutsche Bank raised its rating to "buy".

Wells Fargo
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PowerRating): The bank climbed 0.55% or 14 cents to $25.63/share after pricing its TARP repayment shares at $25.00 each, obtaining more than the amount owed to TARP.

CardioNet
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PowerRating): The heart monitoring device maker soared 16.67% or 86 cents to $6.02/share higher after announcing it is considering putting itself up for sale.

Gold added $1.10 to $1123.00, oil advanced $1.29 to $70.80 and the VIX index eased higher by 2.22% to 21.62.

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Market Snapshot

Dow

 -49.05 10452.00

NASDAQ

 -11.05 2201.05

S&P 500

 -6.18 1107.93

Economic
News

Core PPI (Nov): Consensus: 0.2%, Prior: -0.6%

PPI (Nov): Consensus: 0.8%, Prior: 0.3%

Empire Manufacturing (Dec): Consensus: 24.00, Prior: 23.51

Net Long-Term TIC Flows (Oct): Consensus: $42.3B, Prior: $40.7B

Capacity Utlization (Nov): Consensus: 71.1%, Prior: 70.7%

Industrial Production (Nov): Consensus: 0.5%, Prior: 0.1%

Building Permits (Nov): Consensus: 570K, Prior: 552K

Housing Starts (Nov): Consensus: 578K, Prior: 529K

CPI (Nov): Consensus: 0.4, Prior: 0.2%

Core CPI (Nov): Consensus: 0.1%, Prior: 0.3%

Crude Inventories (12/11): Consensus: NA, Prior: -3.82M

FOMC Rate Decision (12/16): Consensus: 0.25%, Prior: 0.25%

Initial Claims (12/12): Consensus: 465K, Prior: 474K

Continuing Claims (12/5): Consensus: 5170K, Prior: 5157K

Leading Indicators (Nov): Consensus: 0.7%, Prior: 0.3%

Philadelphia Fed (Dec): Consensus: 16.0, Prior: 16.7