Stocks Slide Into The Close
Stocks Slide Into The Close.
Wall Street was unable to hang on to early gains Monday despite stellar earnings reports and upbeat outlooks from Caterpillar and Whirlpool, and a slew of merger-related news. Concerns that aid packages promised to Greece may not be enough to lift the debt-ridden nation out of its financial troubles weighed on traders.
Shares of Citigroup
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) dropped 5.1% after the Treasury Department said it will sell 1.5 million if its common shares, just under 20% of the government's holdings in the bank, which it received in exchange for bailout money during the financial crisis.
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Shares of Goldman Sachs
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) took another hit, falling 3.4% at the close. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and other top executive, Fabrice Tourre, will testify before the Senate on Tuesday in a hearing about the role investment banks had in the financial crisis. Blanfein and Goldman face a shareholder lawsuit over allegedly misleading investors and hiding details about some of the securities it sold. On April 16 the SEC charged Goldman and Tourre with civil fraud for selling collateralized debt obligations to investors without disclosing that a major hedge fund run by billionaireJohn Paulson was involved in creating the securities and then bet against them.
At the closing bell Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average eked out less than a once-point gain to 11,205. The S&P 500 fell 5 points to 1,212 and the Nasdaq gave up 7 points to 2,523.
M&A action lifted car rental stocks Monday after Hertz Global Holdings
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) in a cash-and-stock deal worth $1.2 billion. Shares of Hertz and Dollar soared 14.1% and 10.9%, respectively. Avis Budget Group
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In telecom shares of Research In Motion
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) and Sprint-Nextel
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On the earnings front Caterpillar
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) easily beat analysts' profit estimates and upped its outlook for 2010, lifting shares 4.2% at the close. Whirlpool
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) shares jumped 10% after the washing machine maker more than doubled its quarterly profits and upped its guidance. Humana
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) also beat expectations but its shares fell 4.3%. Money manager BlackRock
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Dow components 3M
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) parent UAL
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) and U.S. Airways
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), which announced last week the two had broken off merger talks, for any clues on the future of consolidation in the industry.
Also Tuesday, the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index is expected to dip 0.1% in February, after rising .3% in January, as winter weather kept home buyers at bay. The 20-city index, which measures home prices in major cities across America, could show an increase year-over-year which would point to something of a rebound in the still-struggling housing market.
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