Top 10 News Items for 6/28-7/2: Nonfarm Payrolls Beat, Unemployment Rate Comes in at 9.5%; Tesla's IPO En Fuego; House Passes FinReg Bill
Here is a recap of the top news items from this week on Wall Street:
1. The highly-anticipated nonfarm payroll number for the month of June was released on Friday of this week, showing that, despite claims from Obama that job growth is "strong", the US is still bleeding jobs. The Labor Department announced that the nonfarm segment of the jobs market lose 125,000 positions last month, slightly better than the 130,000 decline economists had been looking for. A silver lining to the report: the unemployment rate came in at 9.5%, a surprise drop from May's reading of 9.7%.
2. The IPO for Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA) was released this week. After pricing at $17, shares opened above $19 and quickly surged over $30 by noon. The stock traded almost 19 million shares on its first day of trading. Traders who got in on the IPO, however, took profits following Monday's initial 40% surge and the stock sold-off to finish the week. Shares closed at $19.20 on Friday.
3. The House passed its version of the FinReg bill this week, and voting will now make its way to the Senate, however voting will not take place til later this month. Although the bill has certainly been the target of a fair share of criticism, it appears that Senators will have enough votes to pass the bill thru to President Obama.
4. Shares of Abraxis (Nasdaq: ABII) jumped more than 21% on Wednesday of this week as Celgene (Nasdaq: CELG) announced that it would acquire the company for $58.00 in cash and 0.2617 shares of Celgene common stock. The deal was valued at more than $2.9 billion. Shares of Celgene sold-off by about 4% on Wednesday.
5. Pending home sales for the month of May fell a whopping 30%, well off the 14.2% decline economists had been expecting. The sharp move lower puts the Pending Home Sales Index to 77.6, 15.9 percent below May of last year when it was 92.3. The SPDR S&P Homebuilder ETF (NYSE: XHB) fell about 7% this week.
6. Auto sales for the month of June were released this week, indicating a decline from last month. Ford posted a 15.4% rise, GM saw sales rise 10.7% and Chrysler reported a 35% increase in monthly sales. Elsewhere, Toyota (NYSE: TM) saw a modest 6.8% increase and Nissan saw sales jump 10.8%.
7. A widely watched barometer of the health of the U.S. economy tumbled in June, as the confidence of American consumers suffered a relapse under the weight of high unemployment and the weakness in the housing market. The Conference Board reported that is Consumer Confidence Index fell nearly 10 points to 52.9 in June, down from the revised reading in May of 62.7. The reading for this month was well off the economist consensus forecast of 62.8.
8. The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the sale of approximately 1.1 billion shares of Citigroup (NYSE: C) common stock pursuant to the completion of its second trading plan with Morgan Stanley as sales agent. To date, Treasury has sold a total of approximately 2.6 billion shares of Citigroup common stock at an average price per share of $4.03, and has received total gross proceeds of approximately $10.5 billion from the sale.
9. Shares of Verizon (NYSE: VZ) had a flat week despite rumors that Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone could finally make its way to the wireless provider. Although the rumors seemed to reach an apex this week, talk of such a move have been making the rounds for months and months as, it seems, more than a few loyal Apple customers are unhappy with the AT&T (NYSE: T) network.
10. After hitting a 4-year low against the US dollar in early June, the Euro continued to rebound this week as investor concerns have shifted away from European debt and back to the skittish US recovery. The euro/dollar trade closed at $1.255 this week.
1. The highly-anticipated nonfarm payroll number for the month of June was released on Friday of this week, showing that, despite claims from Obama that job growth is "strong", the US is still bleeding jobs. The Labor Department announced that the nonfarm segment of the jobs market lose 125,000 positions last month, slightly better than the 130,000 decline economists had been looking for. A silver lining to the report: the unemployment rate came in at 9.5%, a surprise drop from May's reading of 9.7%.
2. The IPO for Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA) was released this week. After pricing at $17, shares opened above $19 and quickly surged over $30 by noon. The stock traded almost 19 million shares on its first day of trading. Traders who got in on the IPO, however, took profits following Monday's initial 40% surge and the stock sold-off to finish the week. Shares closed at $19.20 on Friday.
3. The House passed its version of the FinReg bill this week, and voting will now make its way to the Senate, however voting will not take place til later this month. Although the bill has certainly been the target of a fair share of criticism, it appears that Senators will have enough votes to pass the bill thru to President Obama.
4. Shares of Abraxis (Nasdaq: ABII) jumped more than 21% on Wednesday of this week as Celgene (Nasdaq: CELG) announced that it would acquire the company for $58.00 in cash and 0.2617 shares of Celgene common stock. The deal was valued at more than $2.9 billion. Shares of Celgene sold-off by about 4% on Wednesday.
5. Pending home sales for the month of May fell a whopping 30%, well off the 14.2% decline economists had been expecting. The sharp move lower puts the Pending Home Sales Index to 77.6, 15.9 percent below May of last year when it was 92.3. The SPDR S&P Homebuilder ETF (NYSE: XHB) fell about 7% this week.
6. Auto sales for the month of June were released this week, indicating a decline from last month. Ford posted a 15.4% rise, GM saw sales rise 10.7% and Chrysler reported a 35% increase in monthly sales. Elsewhere, Toyota (NYSE: TM) saw a modest 6.8% increase and Nissan saw sales jump 10.8%.
7. A widely watched barometer of the health of the U.S. economy tumbled in June, as the confidence of American consumers suffered a relapse under the weight of high unemployment and the weakness in the housing market. The Conference Board reported that is Consumer Confidence Index fell nearly 10 points to 52.9 in June, down from the revised reading in May of 62.7. The reading for this month was well off the economist consensus forecast of 62.8.
8. The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the sale of approximately 1.1 billion shares of Citigroup (NYSE: C) common stock pursuant to the completion of its second trading plan with Morgan Stanley as sales agent. To date, Treasury has sold a total of approximately 2.6 billion shares of Citigroup common stock at an average price per share of $4.03, and has received total gross proceeds of approximately $10.5 billion from the sale.
9. Shares of Verizon (NYSE: VZ) had a flat week despite rumors that Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone could finally make its way to the wireless provider. Although the rumors seemed to reach an apex this week, talk of such a move have been making the rounds for months and months as, it seems, more than a few loyal Apple customers are unhappy with the AT&T (NYSE: T) network.
10. After hitting a 4-year low against the US dollar in early June, the Euro continued to rebound this week as investor concerns have shifted away from European debt and back to the skittish US recovery. The euro/dollar trade closed at $1.255 this week.
You May Also Be Interested In
Create E-mail Alert Related Categories
Special ReportsRelated Entities
Chrysler LLC, Nonfarm Payrolls, Pending Home Sales, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Standard & Poor's, Consumer Confidence Index, StreetInsider.com Top 10 News Items for the Week, Layoffs, Barack Obama, TeslaSign up for StreetInsider Free!
Receive full access to all new and archived articles, unlimited portfolio tracking, e-mail alerts, custom newswires and RSS feeds - and more!
