Market Wrap: Yahoo! Gets Techie Chief; Kodak Flips to Ch. 11; Auto Sales Great...for Detroit 3

Market wrap-up for January 4th

End of the Day: Dow Jones up 21.0 to 1,418.42; Nasdaq down 0.4 to 2,648.36; S&P 500 up 0.2 to 1,277.30

The following is a brief summary of events moving markets today:

• O Yoo-hoo! New CEO joins search giant: You may have heard about this today, but Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) appointed former PayPal president Scott Thompson as its new Chief Executive Officer. We've written several or more articles about this, which you can read here.
  
  Most of Yahoo!'s move lower today didn't stem around Thompson -- he's a fine exec, as his time at PayPal shows -- rather that Yahoo! will now be drawing little to no interest from private equity investors (i.e. - no sale).
  
  
• A photographic finish? Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK) -- which is the name of the founder + a made-up word -- shares sank in afternoon trading, following reports the company is already prepping in case of bankruptcy. The WSJ said Kodak is still aiming to sell a tranche of 1,100 patents to bring in cash for operations to continue, but time is running short, and investors aren't making quite the moves needed yet. Click here for more color.
  
  Kodak ended the session about 28.2 percent lower.
  
  
• Auto sales in FY11 go "Vroom! Vroom!": U.S. automakers ended 2011 with a bang. Ford (NYSE: F) reported a sales increase of 10 percent in December, and 11 percent for the year, General Motors (NYSE: GM) up 4.6 percent in December and 13 percent for 2011, and Chrysler up 37 percent in December and 26 percent for the year.
  
  Toyota (NYSE: TM) saw a roughly 1 percent increase in December sales, with annual sales down 6.7 percent. Honda (NYSE: HMC) reported a 19 percent drop in December sales, and 7.1 percent decline for the year.
  
  
• More Netflix M&A news: Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) ended about 11.6 percent better Wednesday. The move may have been related to Yahoo! grabbing Scott Thompson from eBay's PayPal as its new CEO.
  
  Following the announcement, and on the subsequent conference call, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster appeared on CNBC to give some thoughts. One key takeaway that investors might be focusing on, as Munster said, is Thompson alluding a lot to expanding Yahoo!'s "content" universe, getting more content for users that are on the site.
  
  He hinted that this might mean Yahoo! could make a move for Netflix or Hulu in an effort to broaden it's offerings in terms of content.
  
  
• Your political minute: Mitt Romney won the Iowa Republican Caucuses by a margin of 8 votes over Rick Santorum. Michelle Bachmann ended here GOP political run. There's your political update for the day.

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