Stocks Fried, Mortgage Smacked, Gold Spikes

  • August 18, 2008
  • David Goodboy

Stocks were fried today on rising gold and extreme pessimism in the mortgage business, as the major indexes fell the most in over a week. The DJIA gave back -180.51 to 11479.39, the Nasdaq fell -35.54 to 2416.98 and the S&P 500 dropped -19.56 to 1278.64.

Fannie Mae
(
FNM |
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PowerRating) – The large mortgage company and her brother Freddie Mac were smacked down today 21.74% or $1.72 to $6.19/share after Baron’s stated that a Federal bailout would devastate investors.

Lennar Corp
(
LEN |
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PowerRating) – dropped 7.19% or $0.85 to $10.96/share as the home builder suffers through the worst housing slump since the Great Depression

General Motors
(
GM |
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PowerRating) led the DJIA lower with a loss of 7.42% or $0.83 to $10.35/share on negative comments from CEO Rick Wagoner.

UnionbancalCP
(
UB |
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PowerRating) climbed 11.80% or $7.73 to $73.22/share after Mitsubishi upped its takeover offer to procure full control of the California Bank.

Gold spiked $14.60 to $806.70, Oil gave back another $0.86 to $112.91 and the VIX rocked up 7.15% to 20.98 indicating the market is getting nervous once again.

Market Snapshot

Dow

 -180.02 11479.39

NASDAQ

 -35.54 2416.98

S&P 500

 -19.56 1278.64

Economic
News

Trade Balance (Jun): Consensus -$61.9B, Prior -$59.8

Treasury Budget (Jul): Consensus -86.8B, Prior -$36.4B

Export Price ex-ag. (Jul): Consensus NA, Prior 0.9%

Import Price ex-oil (Jul): Consensus NA, Prior 0.9%

Retail Sales (Jul): Consensus -0.1%, Prior 0.1%

Retail Sales ex-auto (Jul): Consensus 0.5%, Prior 0.8%

Business Inventories (Jun): Consensus 0.6%, Prior 0.3%

Crude Inventories (08/09): Consensus NA, Prior 1614K

Core CPI (Jul): Consensus 0.2%, Prior 0.3%

CPI (Jul): Consensus 0.4%, Prior 1.1%

Initial Claims (08/09): Consensus 436K, Prior 455K

NY Empire State Index (Aug): Consensus -5.0, Prior -4.9

Net Foreign Purchases (Jun): Consensus $57.5B, Prior $67.0B

Capacity Utilization (Jul): Consensus 79.8%, Prior 79.9%

Industrial Production (Jul): Consensus 0.0%, Prior 0.5%

Mich Sentiment-Prel (Aug): Consensus 62.0, Prior 61.2

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