Top 10 News Items for 8/24-8/28: Obama Names Bernanke Chairman for Another Term; S&P/CaseShiller Data Surprises to the Upside; AIG Rises More Than 50%

August 28, 2009 3:22 PM EDT

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

1. President Obama nominated Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to another term at the position, confirming what had been a hotly-debated topic over the last few weeks. While not all traders necessarily like the work Bernanke has done through the financial crisis, most agree that electing a new Chairman, at this time, would be worse for Wall Street.

2. Stocks jumped Tuesday on much better-than-expected home price data from S&P/CaseShiller: the reading for June came in at 141.86, or down 14.92% during the quarter, which compared to the Street consensus of down 19.75%.

3. Shares of AIG (NYSE: AIG) rose more than 50% this week following comments from the company's new CEO, Robert Benmosche, saying he'd consider consulting with AIG's former long-time CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. Traders viewed the comments as a positive, and likely sparked a squeeze in shares of AIG. Later in the week, Greenberg came out squelching any rumors that he would be a direct advisor, but the stock maintained its gains.

4. Boeing (NYSE: BA) shares rallied more than 8% on Thursday as the company announced that it expects the first flight of its 787 Dreamliner by the end of this year, with delivery expected by Q4 2010. Boeing also found that the Dreamliner program is not in a forward-loss position, but that the company will likely record a pre-tax $2.5 billion charge against Q3 results due to the program.

5. Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) surprised the Street by releasing (intentionally or not) its Q2 results about 3 minutes before the closing bell sounded on Thursday. Beating on both the earnings and sales numbers, shares jumped about 6% within seconds of the release, and continued higher on Friday. Shares of Dell finished this week nearly 11% higher.

6. After numerous extensions, the 'Cash for Clunkers' program ended this week. Data from the Department of Transportation showed that rebate applications totaled nearly $3 billion, with almost 700,000 units sold over the course of the month-or-so it was active.

7. Following solid housing data on Tuesday, traders got another round of solid numbers on Wednesday when better-than-expected new home sales for the month of July was reported. The pace was the most rapid since last September, coming in at 433,000 units. The Street had been expecting new home sales of about 390,000.

8. Just before the market opened Friday, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) raised its Q3 sales guidance from $8.5 billion, plus or minus $400 million, to $9 billion, plus or minus $200 million. The Street was looking for quarterly sales of $9.07 billion. Shares of Intel rose more than 4% on the news.

9. Adding to the plethora of better-than-expected economic data points, consumer confidence for the month of August came in at 54.1, versus the consensus of 47.9

10. Starting the week of with some M&A activity, Warner Chilcott (Nasdaq: WCRX) confirmed that it reached an agreement with Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) to purchase P&G's global pharmaceutical business for an up-front cash payment of $3.1 billion. Shares of Warner rose more than 27% on Monday following the announcement.

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• New Home Sales
• Ben S. Bernanke
• Standard & Poor's
• StreetInsider.com Top 10 News Items for the Week
• Barack Obama

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