Top 10 News Items 6/8-6/12: Treasury Approves 10 Banks to Repay TARP; Yields Rising on Mixed Auction Results; Crude Cracks $70/Barrel

June 12, 2009 3:29 PM EDT

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

1. On Tuesday of this week, the Treasury announced 10 of the largest U.S. financial institutions participating in the Capital Purchase Program have met repayment requirements recently established by banking regulators. Such a requirement makes these institutions eligible to repay their borrowed TARP funds. Combined with repayments received to date from other institutions, Treasury will have received approximately $70 billion in repayments from CPP participants. Banks approved included: Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), American Express (NYSE: AXP), BB&T Capital (NYSE: BBT) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

2. Stocks tumbled on Wednesday following a very concerning 10-year note auction which boosted the yield to just over 4%. Treasuries have been extremely volatile recently as investor concerns related to inflation continue cloud the minds of market players. On Thursday, however, results from a 30-year auction came in much better-than-expected, giving hopes to debt investors.

3. Crude oil cracked the $70 level this week, adding another 5% onto a rally which has lasted since mid April, when prices were in the $50 range. Also pushing prices higher, both the EIA and IEA boosted their forecasts for crude oil prices this year.

4. Its now been more than a month since swine flu began spreading worldwide. This week, the WHO officially raised its Pandemic Alert level to Phase 6, the most drastic level. This marks the first global flu epidemic in 41 years. Related stocks performed well this week amid the troubling news: Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD), Vical (Nasdaq: VICL), AVI BioPharma (Nasdaq: AVII) and Novavax (Nasdaq: NVAX).

5. Hosting its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Fransisco this week, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) unveiled its new iPhone 3G S, where the S stands for "speed". Just a few features include GPS tracking, a built-in 3 megapixel camera and voice controlled access. The new iPhone 3G S will be priced at $199 for 16 gigs. Apple also said that it will price the old version of the iPhone at $99 for 8 gigs.

6. Bank of America's (NYSE: BAC) Ken Lewis was grilled infront of a House committee on Thursday of this week, following the ongoing controversy related to BofA's acquisition of Merrill Lynch. As the story goes, government officials, including Ben Bernanke, pressured BofA to complete the acquisition in light of the MAC clause, or "material adverse change".

7. Wednesday morning, Home Depot (NYSE: HD) issued better-than-expected FY09 guidance, saying EPS will likely come in flat to down 7% from last year, with adj-EPS coming in down 20-26% from last year. Despite the positive news, shares of HD finished the week down about 0.4%.

8. Following talks earlier in the week, BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Barclays Global Investors, including its market-leading ETF platform, iShares, from Barclays PLC (NYSE: BCS). If the transaction is approved it would create an independent and fully integrated asset management firm with combined assets under management of over $2.7 trillion. Shares of BlackRock fell about 4% on the news.

9. Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) raised its Q2 sales and EPS guidance this week, boosting shares by about 6.3% on Monday. The company said sales will now be in the range of $2.3-$2.5 billion, which compares to the Street estimate of $2.21 billion, while EPS for the quarter move from $0.01-$0.15 to $0.14-$0.22, versus the consensus of $0.10.

10. Another tech company, Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM), also issued raised guidance this week: Q3 sales guidance moves from $2.4-$2.6 billion to $2.67-$2.77 billion, versus the consensus of $2.54 billion. Operating net income guidance moves from $800-$900 million to $1.06-$1.11 billion and GAAP net income raised from $550-$650 million to $830-$880 million. Also, related to units, Qualcomm sees Q3 CDMA shipments of 94-95 million, up from 87-92 million units. Shares of Qualcomm remained flat on the news.

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• JPMorgan
• Goldman Sachs
• Ben S. Bernanke
• Morgan Stanley
• Merrill Lynch
• Banc of America
• Barclays
• BB&T Capital Markets
• StreetInsider.com Top 10 News Items for the Week
• Crude Oil
• Treasury Capital Purchase Program

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