Tag - Good

Arthrocare Corp (Nasdaq:ARTC), WNS Holdings Ltd (Nasdaq:WNS) and CFS Bancorp Inc (Nasdaq:CITZ) are among the new 52-week lows in Friday's trading among companies with market capitalizations under $1 billion.

Also included among the results: PDL BioPharma Inc. (Nasdaq:PDLI), Take Two Interactive Software Inc. (Nasdaq:TTWO), Approach Resources Inc .(Nasdaq:AREX), Gladstone Commerical REIT (Nasdaq:GOOD), Bancorp Rhode Island Inc. (Nasdaq:BARI) and Tennant Co. (Nasdaq:TNC).

Here are the new 52-week lows among small caps:

Small-cap stocks slipped 1.89% late Friday, as a bleak report on the housing sector, options expiration volatility and ongoing worries about the economy offset a spate of positive earnings in the tech arena. Today’s small-cap gainers are CIT Group (NYSE:CIT), Universal Stainless & Alloy Products (Nasdaq:USAP) and Ambac Financial Group (NYSE:ABK). Other Market Watch highlights today included:

• BMO Capital's Andy Busch to SCI: "There is a serious need to educate the banking sector participants on the changes in the Treasury programs the Fed programs directed at easing the credit crunch." 
• Outside of the gold market, commodity stocks were doing well today, with coal, steel, gas utilities, oil exploration, gas storage and agriculture products all up. 
• On the downside, anything tied to housing was struggling, including home furnishing stocks and homebuilder shares. Bank stocks and financial shares were also lagging the general market. 
• The expiration of options on stocks today likely played a role in some of the market’s struggles as the directional bias into expiration is clearly toward lower prices. 
• Crude oil jumped some $4 a barrel today as the market anticipates . . .

Small-cap stocks tumbled hard on the opening, pulled down by terrible housing starts data, fear of a recession and expiration worries, which countered positive earnings news and another dip in Libor rates overnight. At 9:57 a.m. ET, the Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) was off 11.14 or 2.08%, at 525.44. Small-caps were leading the way down in equities, which was a troubling signal ahead of the weekend.

The housing starts report came in woefully weak, down 6.3% with the annual rate at 817,000 units, which was well below the forecast of 875,000. The overall rate is the slowest pace since January 1991 and the rate on single-family home units was the lowest in more than 26 years.

The Michigan sentiment survey came in at 57.5, which was well below the forecast of 67.0 and off the September final reading of 70.3. The market had little immediate reaction to the report.

Today marks expirations for stock options, which could add some volatility into the mix. The market has obviously been trending lower for the month, which keeps the bias for expirations on the bearish side of the ledger.

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha” and the richest man in America, said that he was buying U.S. stocks. He wrote that the market will likely move higher “perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up.” In addition to his stunning success as an investor and buyer of companies, Buffett’s folksy personae has generated quite a following . . .

Small-cap stocks went back into full-blown bearish mode into mid-session trading, sinking to daily lows while also notching the lowest intraday price print since August 2004. At 12:37 p.m. ET, the Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) was down 20.92, or 3.74% at 538.03. Small-caps were once again pacing the move downward and have been consistently underperforming large-caps on the way down the last few weeks. Both the Dow and S&P 500 were off about 2.2% at midday.

Today’s resumption of the slide must come as a huge disappointment to central bankers around the world, who united this morning to present a coordinated rate cut that they hoped would thaw frozen credit lines and renew optimism in the financial community. For now, the rate cut appeared to have only a fleeting bullish response for the market – and even that disappeared within hours as investors continue to fret about the economy. Even inter-bank lending rates were reluctant to free up despite the bold central bank move on rates.