Top 10 News Items 7/27-7/31: Earnings Continue to Dominate the Stock Market; Q2 GDP Comes in Better-Than-Expected; 'Cash for Clunkers' Gets Fresh Cash Supply

July 31, 2009 3:57 PM EDT

Here is a recap of the top news items from this week on Wall Street:

1. Quarterly earnings reports continue flowing in this week: ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW), Kellogg (NYSE: K), Disney (NYSE: DIS), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Visa (NYSE: V), MasterCard (NYSE: MA), US Steel (NYSE: X), First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR), DryShips (Nasdaq: DRYS), Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) and Wynn Resorts (Nasadq: WYNN).

2. Friday, GDP for Q2 came in down 1%, which was marginally better than the down 1.5% the Street had been expecting. Despite the better-than-expected data, stocks started off the session sketchy and by the closing bell had hung onto a modest gain.

3. With the "Cash for Clunkers" plan running short on dough, due to its initial success, the Obama administration and Congress are looking to boost the program by $2 billion. The original plan was $1 billion, but it is exhausted after just one week. The expanded plan has just passed the U.S. House and will now go before the Senate next week.

4. Shares of General Electric (NYSE: GE) jumped more than 7% on Thursday following a convicted upgrade at Goldman Sachs to Buy. The firm also raised its price target on GE from $13 to $15. As one of the larger company's in the Dow 30, Goldman's upgraded marked a major blow to the bears still hoping for a near-term downturn.

5. Following more than a year of back and forth, seemingly nonsense discussions, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) finally announced a deal this week. According to terms of the deal, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers. Shares of Microsoft finished the week modestly higher, while shares of Yahoo! fell more than 18%.

6. The IPO for PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust (NYSE: PMT) opened for trading this week. After pricing 16 million shares at $20, the stock opened about $1 lower. The new stock closed the week around $18.80.

7. IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SPSS Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSS) announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive merger agreement for IBM to acquire SPSS for $50/share, resulting in a total cash consideration in the merger of approximately $1.2 billion.

8. New home sales data was released on Monday, showing that the sales rose 11% to 384,000 in June. The Street had been expecting new home sales of 352,000. Continuing on the "green shoot" play, many traders believe this most recent figure is yet more signals that the housing bottom could be nearing or already passed.

9. Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) and Virgin Mobile USA, Inc., (NYSE: VM) announced Tuesday that they have approved a definitive agreement for Sprint to acquire Virgin Mobile USA for a total equity value of approximately $483 million, which includes the value of Sprint's current 13.1% fully diluted ownership interest in Virgin Mobile USA. Shares of Sprint finished the week about 11%.

10. In the momentum play of the week, Inovio Biomedical (AMEX: INO) surged more than 300% on Wednesday as it returned positive results from an H1N1 trial. The next day, the company announced a $30 million direct offering.

Related Categories

Special Reports

Stocks Mentioned

Related Entities

• New Home Sales
• StreetInsider.com Top 10 News Items for the Week
• Barack Obama

Comments

Add Your Comment

Name

Subject

Body

Verification can't see the text?
click here to refresh the image.
what's this?