Stocks Stumble, Apple Threatened, Housing Crushes Estimates

• June 16, 2009
• Dave Goodboy

Stocks stumbled further today as retailers and commodity producers led the decline. Broad based nervousness prevailed despite crushingly positive Housing Start figures and good news out of Palm. Palm’s new Pre phone is selling better than expected and an analyst called it the wireless sector’s “most valuable asset” threatening Apple’s iPhone dominance. The DJIA gave back another -107.46 to 8504.67, the tech heavy Nasdaq fell -20.20 to 1796.18 and the broad based S&P 500 dropped -11.75 to 911.97.

Apple
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Best Buy
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Matrixx Initiatives
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Tyco Electronics
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Gold added $4.70 to $932.20, Oil fell 0.15 cents to $70.52 and the fear index VIX surged 6.07% to 32.68.

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Market Snapshot

Dow -107.46 8504.67 NASDAQ -20.20 1796.18 S&P 500 -11.75 911.97

Economic News

NY Empire Manufacturing Index (Jun): Consensus: -4.60, Prior: -4.55 Net Long-Term TIC Flows (Apr): Consensus: $60.0B, Prior: $55.4B, Revised From: $55.8B Housing Starts (May): Consensus: 483K, Prior: 458K Building Permits (May): Consensus: 500K, Prior: 498K PPI (May): Consensus: 0.6%, Prior: 0.3% Core PPI (May): Consensus: 0.1%, Prior: 0.1% Capacity Utilization (May): Consensus: 68.4%, Prior: 69.1% Industrial Production (May): Consensus: -0.8%, Prior: -0.5% Core CPI (May): Consensus: 0.3%, Prior: 0.3% CPI (May): Consensus: -0.9%, Prior: -0.7% Current Account Balance (Q1): Consensus: -$85.0B, Prior: -$132.8B Crude Inventories (06/12): Consensus: NA, Prior: -4.38M Initial Claims (06/13): Consensus: 610K, Prior: 601K Leading Indicators (May): Consensus: 0.9%, Prior: 1.0% Philadelphia Fed (Jun): Consensus: -17.0, Prior: -22.6