Top 10 News Items 11/16-11/20: Dell Blows It Again, Geither Gets Roasted on Capitol Hill, Again, IPO's A-Plenty
Here is a recap of the top news items from this week on Wall Street:
1. Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) shares tumbled more than 9% on Friday following a Q3 earnings miss, reported on Thursday after the close. Traders had been bidding up the school prior to the results as Dell's turnaround story has been a hot tech story recently.
2. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was grilled on Capitol Hill this week, taking on a flurry of questions -- maybe even accusations -- related to his role in the financial crisis. Several members of Congress even went as far as asking Geithner to step down from his position.
3. IPO's were all over the Street this week: Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT), Cloud Peak (NYSE: CLD), Archipelago Learning (Nasdaq: ARCL), 7 Days Group (NYSE: SVN) and Global Defense Technology (Nasdaq: GTEC).
4. Warren Buffett's 13F for Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) showed that he added to his stakes in Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), the world's largest retailer, and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), the world's largest oil company. Buffett also showed a new stake in Republic Services (NYSE: RSG).
5. Retail sales for the month of October came in up 1.4%, better than the 0.9% economists had been expecting. Economists are skeptical to say that the numbers are in fact a clear sign that the economy is on the road to recovery. Excluding auto sales, retail demand only rose a slight 0.2 percent in October, half of the expected 0.4 percent rise that was expected by economists surveyed by Thompson Reuters.
6. Retailers continued reporting their quarterly results this week: Target (NYSE: TGT), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Limited (NYSE: LTD) and TJX Companies (NYSE: TJX). The SPDR S&P Retail ETF (NYSE: XRT) finished this week slightly lower.
7. In a letter to clients of his Paulson & Co. hedge fund, investing guru John Paulson said he thinks shares of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) can double in the next two years. In the letter obtained by Bloomberg news, Paulson said shares of Bank of America could rise to $29.81 by December 2011 as writedowns ease. "Banks will have passed the current writedown cycle and have visibility for growth in 2012," the letter said. Shares of BofA finished this week slightly higher.
8. Bearish banking analyst Meredith Whitney continued her ways this week, telling Mario Bartiromo to "sell the banks" and that "everything is expensive right now". See also said she is concerned with capital levels in the banking sector and sees another leg down in the residential real estate market.
9. BofA downgraded the entire Semi sector on Thursday of this week, putting a kink in the performance of the Dow and Nasdaq. The firm cited "unfavorable indications from our cyclical framework suggesting a modest inventory correction, even in the face of improving electronic demand and a more constructive outlook for the global economies." BofA downgraded Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) and Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM), among others.
10. SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWRA) shares tumbled nearly 19% on Tuesday of this week after it disclosed an investigation leading to "unsubstantiated accounting errors". Following the news, there was a parade of analysts scurrying to downgrade the stock
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