News and the Market – Citigroup (NYSE:C), Toyota (NYSE:TM), Ford Motors (NYSE:F), Las Vegas Sand Corp (NYSE:LVS)
The Dow has continued to hover around the 11,000 mark, but have yet to break through. The Dow, NASDAQ and S&P are down slightly to start the day (at the time of writing). Crude oil prices are down as well, after hitting a 17-month high yesterday. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from their March 16th meeting, which indicated that the Fed was holding back from raising interest rates in the near future. Also making waves today is the auction of $21 billion of 10-year Treasury notes.
The markets seems to be holding back to evaluate the impact of the Greenspan hearing. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently appeared before a congressional committee, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to defend his actions during the recent financial crisis. Greenspan has said the Fed took actions to attempt to contain abuse of sub prime lending in the economy, but regulators have claimed the Feds actions only covered approximately 1% of the market. Greenspan also said that the Feds interest rate level wasn’t at fault for the financial melt down, but instead blamed credit rating agencies and government policy of encouraging home ownership for fanning the flames.
The heads of Citigroup (NYSE:C) are due to appear before the committee on Thursday, as well as the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. They’re expected to defend their high-risk mortgage lending policy that helped cause the financial crisis. Currently, 37% of Citi is currently owned by the US Treasury, but the Treasury has announced recently that they’re planning to sell off their entire stake in the company by this time next year.
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General Motors has announced a $4.3 billion loss last year after declaring bankruptcy in July ’09. They’ve also announced a $3.4 billion loss in the first quarter of this year. However, according to the company, GM is committed to paying back it’s outstanding balances to the US Treasury and Canada by June of this year “at the latest”. The Detriot auto-giant also appears ready to abandon it’s Hummer brand all together in the near future.
In other auto news, Toyota (NYSE:TM) has announced a plan to extend their March buyer-incentive program after seeing sales rise 41% last month in the United States, making them the second largest seller for the month. The Japanese-based auto-maker has said it plans to extend this incentive program through May. The US Department of Transportation has recently levied a $16.4 million dollar fine against the company for it’s recent recall of approximately 2.3 million vehicles.
It is being reported by Reuters that Ford Motor Credit, a division of American automaker Ford (NYSE:F), will be launching $1.75 billion in 5-year note sales today. These bonds are expected to be priced later today (April 7th, 2010), and are being released with a 7.125% yield. The American automaker has also announced it’s voluntary disclosure of future water use, in order to enhance it’s environmental friendly image to consumers. Their stock was up early in the day, but has since leveled out (at the time of writing).
Las Vegas Sands Corp (NYSE:LVS) stock has come back down to earth a bit after two strong days saw the stock rise over 8%. The company has endured a couple downgrades from some leading analysts today, most notably UBS moving the company from “buy” to “neutral”. Still, the stock is well above the $20.36 buy recommendation suggested by Oakshire Financial writer Stanley Barnes in our most recent premium Wall Street Elite newsletter. For our premium subscribers, another WSE is due to be released today, and it’s a good one!
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That’s all for the day. Good investing, faithful readers.
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