Top 10 News Items 4/6-4/9: Wells Fargo Stuns the Street with Upside Guidance; Treasury Could Extend TARP Funds to Life Insurers; Centex/Pulte Announce Merger

April 9, 2009 4:48 PM EDT

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

1. Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) dropped a bomb on Wall Street Thursday when it issued upside Q1 guidance. That's right... a financial offering a better-than-expected outlook. The bank said it sees a record level of Q1 net income, $3 billion, implying EPS of $0.55 after preferred dividends. The Street was looking for Q1 EPS of just $0.23. The news boosted stocks across the board and sent financial stocks skyrocketing. The FAS, or Financial Bull 3x ETF (NYSE: FAS), rose more than 40% on Thursday.

2. Stocks gained upside momentum on Wednesday when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Treasury could be considering extending TARP funds to life insurance companies. Stocks like Hartford (NYSE: HIG) surged more than 13% on the news.

3. More "green shoots" this week, and out of thee most beaten up sector -- homebuilders. Showing that this area of the economy is at least not completely dead, Pulte Homes (NYSE: PHM) and Centex (NYSE: CTX) announced a merger, creating the U.S.'s largest homebuilder. Shares of Centex surged more than 25% on the news.

4. Talks between IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Sun Micro (Nasdaq: JAVA) broke down early this week, sending shares of JAVA plunging more than 22% on Monday alone. According to the reports, IBM withdrew its offer for Sun late Sunday night.

5. For the most part, March retail sales, released on Thursday, came in better-than-expected, maybe simply because expectations have gotten chopped down so much recently. Some of the outliers were: Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) saw a 1.4% rise in same store sales, ex-fuel, but the Street was disappointed, Costco (Nasdaq: COST), Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) which marked a 35% drop in March comps and BJ's Wholesale (NYSE: BJ).

6. Shares of Textron (NYSE: TXT) surged more than 45% on Thursday amid rumors that a consortium of UAE investors are close to a deal to buy the company for $21/share. Notably, since April 1, shares of Textron have rallied more than 130% on similar takeover chatter.

7. The SEC held an opening meeting in Washington this week in order to discuss restrictions related to short selling. While many believed the SEC voted on initiatives during the meeting, the SEC stopped short of such a move and instead issued a fact sheet related to the issues. The SEC will now be looking for comments related to the fact sheet and meeting again later to discuss what will happen.

8. Former Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Mayo made waves at his new firm (Calyon) this week when he issued a note starting the entire banking sector at Underweight.

9. Alcoa (NYSE: AA) kicked off the Q1 earnings season on Tuesday, reporting, as it usually does, worse-than-expected results.

10. Confirming rumors that had been tossed around the Street for quite some time, Barclays (NYSE: BCS) announced Thursday that it has agreed to sell its iShares ETF unit for $4.4 billion to CVC. The move is expected to generate much needed capital which Barclays has been searching for recently. Shares of the European bank rallied more than 16% on the news.

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• Deutsche Bank
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• Barclays
• Mike Mayo
• Dividend
• StreetInsider.com Top 10 News Items for the Week

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