Goldman Sachs downgraded Daimler (NYSE: DAI) to Neutral from Buy, according toMarketWatch.
Citigroup downgraded Genentech (NYSE: DNA) to Hold from Buy, according toBriefing.com. The news service also writes that UBS downgraded Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) to Hold from Buy.
Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN) was raised to Buy at Citigroup, according toBriefing.com. The financial site also reports that Harman (NYSE: HAR) was cut to Neutral at Baird.
Well, the market was in the dumps yesterday and is even worse today. So this may be a good time to check on my list of stocks for those looking for equities that are stable enough to ride out this bearish storm.
The standard for comparison will be the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, which closed on June 30, 2008 at 1,280.00. The following are the five stocks with closing prices from July 1.
1) Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) -- when recommended the stock closed at $64.34 and paid a 2.89% dividend yield. It finished at $71.70 -- up 11.44%
2) Teva Pharmaceuticals ADR (NASDAQ: TEVA) -- when recommended the stock closed at $45.80 and paid a 1% dividend yield. It finished at $46.41-- up 1.3%.
3) Chubb Corp. (NYSE: CB) -- when recommended the stock closed at $49.01 and paid a 2.64% dividend yield. It finished at $48.39 -- down 1.26%.
If Barack Obama is receiving advice from "my pal Warren" then he must not be listening. There is no way that Warren Buffett, the national debt hawk, would support Obama's stupid idea of giving another $1,000 back to every family in America. It is reported that he would pay for this by creating a windfall profit tax on oil companies.
This give-away program is an attempt to buy votes plain and simple. It would add to the national debt, discourage oil companies from investing and worse it would handicap American companies more than others and mortgage more of our children's futures.
The last thing the people of the United States need is more deficit spending. If we did tax oil companies, which I am against, I would only support using the funds for expanding education, research and development in science and engineering with the goal of maintaining our waning leadership in technology.
The Summer Olympics are only days away and what the Chinese had hoped would be their coming out party to celebrate all that is good, may instead become quite the opposite.
The air pollution in Beijing is so bad that even reducing automobile traffic by 50% has not helped much. China is now considering a 90% reduction according to news reports. Athletes are staying in other countries until the games begin so that they may train somewhere they can breathe. There are also reports that many athletes involved in stamina events will be forced to wear masks to protect themselves from the particulates in the air.
Now Reuters is reporting that "Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday."
So the world media will not be able to do their jobs in a manner they are accustomed to. But who are we actually referring to? Western media, of course, because half the world still limits access to information to some degree.
"Any further market weakness creates creates another opportunity to acquire some outstanding stocks," suggests Kelley Wright, noted for his focus on blue chip, dividend-paying stocks.
In his Investment Quality Trends newsletter, he looks at the benefits of keeping a long-term focus, the value of dividend districutions to an investor's long-term returns, and his current "timely ten" picks for conservative investor.
"The cash dividend for the Dow is $322.40. One year ago the dividend was $284.06. Amidst all the turmoil in the markets and the economy something must be going right with the Dow 30 companies because the dividend is ever climbing.
"Dividends, as we all know, can only come from the reality of earnings; you can't pay what you don't have. The dividend yield on the Dow is currently 2.66%, which represents an 11% downside to a 3.0% yield and the historically repetitive area of Undervalue.
"Will the Average make it down to that level? No one knows but that isn't the point. At current levels the upside is FAR greater, particularly in many of the stocks in our Undervalued area.
I know it doesn't matter at all. Right now we are so stuck on the banking problems and on the companies bleeding from higher energy prices that nobody cares about all of this cash, which will be used to shrink equity. They won't care because the banks, brokers and homebuilders, and the hobbled companies that use oil, have to issue so much equity that you can't see the effect of the equity shrinkage. But it will eventually matter. It has to matter that Deere has taken out 10% of its stock in the last four years. It does matter that Black & Decker (NYSE: BDK) (Cramer's Take) has eliminated almost 20% of its equity. Emerson's taken out 5%, same with Boeing (NYSE: BA) (Cramer's Take). There's just a huge amount of equity being shrunk.
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) Q2 2008 Earnings Conference Call July 15, 2008 8:30 AM ET Management Summary
Operator
Welcome to the Johnson & Johnson second quarter 2008 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference call over to Johnson & Johnson.
Louise Mehrotra, Vice President of Investor Relations
Good morning and welcome. I'm Louise Mehrotra, Vice President of Investor Relations for Johnson & Johnson, and it is my pleasure this morning to review our business results for the second quarter of 2008. With me on the call today is Dominic Caruso, Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer.
A few logistics before we get into the details. This review is being made available to a broader audience via a webcast accessible through the investor relations section of the Johnson & Johnson website. The press release that was sent to the investment community earlier this morning includes the schedule showing sales for major products and/or business franchises to facilitate updating your models. The press release is also available on the Johnson & Johnson website. I will review highlights of the second quarter 2008 results for the corporation and for our three business segments. Following additional remarks from Dominic, we will open the call to your questions. We expect the total call to last approximately one hour.
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) shares rose over 2% by 12:45 on a day the market saw some scary dips earlier and the S&P 500 is still in the red.
The health-care giant is rising after it reported its second-quarter financial results, posting an 8% growth in profit to $1.18 per share (excluding one time charges) and a 9% increase in total revenue to $16.45 billion. The results handily beat analyst expectations (according to Thomson Financial) of $1.12 per share, on revenue of $16 billion. Not only that, but the company also increased its 2008 earnings forecast.
J&J execs claim the company wasn't being significantly hurt by the weakened U.S. economy, and judging from the effect of the lower dollar, which was responsible for 5.6% of the 9% higher revenue, perhaps they're right. Still, the company can't ignore that while international sales jumped 16.2%, U.S. sales increased only 2.1%.
But among the different pharmaceutical companies, it seems there is little doubt that J&J is better poised to ride this global economic downturn; as opposed to to pure-play pharmas, J&J has a more diversified business model. Already the difference was clear in this quarter's results and will probably make even more of a difference in the future, as many pharma companies lose sales to generic drug makers when products go off patent.
Who is next to fail/fall? That seems to be the only question on investors' minds these days, and this morning is not different as concern about the health of the financial sector grows. With global markets plunging overnight, the dollar falling to yet another record low against the euro and ahead of a day full of economic data releases and earnings, as well as a testimony from Fed chairman Bernanke, U.S. stock futures dropped this morning, indicating the market is poised for a lower open.
On Monday, what seemed like might be a promising day with the government plan to bail out Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) and several large deals including the mega beer deal between Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD) and InBev. But once again financials took front stage and after IndyMac was seized by federal regulators over the weekend Wall Street tumbled. The Dow industrials fell 45 points, or 0.41%, the S&P 500 dropped 11 points, or 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 26 points, or 1.17%.
As the day go on, investors will have more to chew on though as several economic reports are due out today. June Producer Price Index, a measure of inflation at the wholesale level, is due before the market open, at 8:30 a.m. EDT. While economists expect a smaller increase in prices in June, an increase is expected for both PPI and core-PPI, which excludes food and energy prices. At the same time, June retail sales will be released, and may show a nice increase due to the government checks. July NY Empire State Index will also be released at that time and it's likely we'll see it decline further. Then, 10:00 a.m., a reading on business inventories for May is due.
As the second quarter earnings crunch begins in earnest this week, the bear market has investors jittery and prognosticators spinning out dire warnings. In the wake of mixed results from Alcoa (NYSE: AA) and General Electric (NYSE: GE) kicking things off last week, here's a look at what Wall Street is expecting from many of the companies scheduled to report this coming week.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial are expecting the following companies to report a rise in earnings when compared to the same period of the previous year.
Nucor Corp. (NYSE: NUE): $1.80 EPS (36.6%) on sales of $6.4 billion (+53.0%)
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG): $4.74 EPS (24.9%) on sales of $3.9 billion (+41.6%)
Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK): 56 cents EPS (23.2%) on sales of $19.9 billion (+17.8%)
CSX Corp. (NYSE: CSX): 90 cents EPS (21.1%) on sales of $2.9 billion (+12.8%)
Altera Corp. (NASDAQ: ALTR): 27 cents EPS (18.5%) on sales of $346.7 million (+8.4%)
IBM (NYSE: IBM): $1.82 EPS (+17.6%) on sales of $25.9 billion (+9.0%)
eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY): 41 cents EPS (17.1%) on sales of $2.2 billion (+18.0%)
Updating the story with the final numbers heading into the week end. The market looked sad again today, so I thought I would spot-check Serious Money: Five stable stocks for troubled times, to see if my picks, (suggested watchlist considerations) were holding up...so far so good, sort of...
The standard for comparison will be the Standard & Poors 500 Index, which closed on June 30, 2008 at 1,280.00. The following are the five stocks with closing prices from July 1.
1) Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) closed at $64.34 and pays a 2.89% dividend yield. (NOW $66.53 -- up 3.4%) finished at $66.26 -- up 2.98%.
2) Teva Pharmaceuticals ADR (NASDAQ: TEVA) closed at $45.80 and pays a 1% dividend yield.( NOW 42.58 -- down 7%) finished at $41.78 -- down 8.78%.
3) Chubb Corp (NYSE: CB) closed at $49.01 and pays a 2.64% dividend yield. (NOW $47.51 -- down 3%) finished at $47.56 -- down 2.96%.
After seeing the interest in yesterday's Serious Money: Five stable stocks for troubled times, I decided to track the stocks on a quarterly basis to see how they hold up over time (otherwise, what would be the purpose of discussing them in the first place?).
I said that all five have shrewd, conservative management teams and have been in the right place, at the right time -- and prepared. The standard for comparison will be the Standard & Poors 500 Index which closed on June 30, 2008 at 1,280.00. Although my original story was published yesterday, I will be using the second quarter end point for my five stocks as well.
According to people familiar with the discussions, the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) has held discussions with Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX) and News Corporation (NYSE: NWS), among others, about joining it in a deal that could lead to the breakup of Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO). Some of the sources said the preliminary talks are unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo!
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) is reportedly in exclusive talks to sell its wound-care business Ethicon to the private-equity arm of JP Morgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM), according to the Wall Street Journal. Terms of the potential deal were not disclosed.
OTHER PAPERS:
Sources familiar with the inquiry said that the Justice Department has opened a formal antitrust investigation into a deal that would allow Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) to provide some search advertising for Yahoo!. The Washington Post reported that investigators will demand documents from Google and Yahoo!, as well as other large companies in the media and Internet industries.
WEB SITES:
Reuters reported that regulators in the European Union are looking at the long-term effects of BHP Billiton Limited's (NYSE: BHP) $170B bid for Rio Tinto Group (NYSE: RTP). Sources familiar with the EU questionnaire said regulators have asked competitors and customers about effects of the deal on their businesses through 2015.
wmt
Well, the market was in the dumps yesterday and is even worse today. So this may be a good time to check on my list of stocks for those looking for equities that are stable enough to ride out this bearish storm. 
If Barack Obama is receiving advice from "my pal Warren" then he must not be listening. There is no way that Warren Buffett, the national debt hawk, would support Obama's stupid idea of giving another $1,000 back to every family in America. It is reported that he would pay for this by creating a windfall profit tax on oil companies.
The Summer Olympics are only days away and what the Chinese had hoped would be their coming out party to celebrate all that is good, may instead become quite the opposite.
"Any further market weakness creates creates another opportunity to acquire some outstanding stocks," suggests Kelley Wright, noted for his focus on blue chip, dividend-paying stocks.
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says when the dust settles, we'll notice the reduced equity here, and stocks will rise to reflect it. 
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ)
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) shares rose over 2% by 12:45 on a day the market saw some scary dips earlier and the S&P 500 is still in the red.
Who is next to fail/fall? That seems to be the only question on investors' minds these days, and this morning is not different as concern about the health of the financial sector grows. With global markets plunging overnight, the dollar falling to yet another record low against the euro and ahead of a day full of economic data releases and earnings, as well as a testimony from Fed chairman Bernanke, U.S. stock futures dropped this morning, indicating the market is poised for a lower open.
As the second quarter earnings crunch begins in earnest this week, the bear market has investors jittery and prognosticators spinning out dire warnings. In the wake of mixed results from Alcoa (NYSE: AA) and General Electric (NYSE: GE) kicking things off last week, here's a look at what Wall Street is expecting from many of the companies scheduled to report this coming week.
Updating the story with the final numbers heading into the week end. The market looked sad again today, so I thought I would spot-check Serious Money: Five stable stocks for troubled times, to see if my picks, (suggested watchlist considerations) were holding up...so far so good, sort of....gif){kind=logo}
MAJOR PAPERS:.gif){kind=logo}
Monday, June 23
Apple (AAPL) iTunes loses artists - an antitrust problem?
U.S. Q2 GDP of 3.3% likely to be fleeting
Cramer on BloggingStocks: Don't bother with the private-equity chatter