New Home Construction Climbs, Markets Soar
An increase in new home construction sent the markets soaring during the midday with the Dow surging 168 points to 10,470. Nasdaq leaped 41 points to 2222.
On the upside
Paulson & Co. disclosed that it purchased 5 million shares of PMI Group (NYSE: PMI) .
A Seeking Alpha article expects RAIT Financial Trust's (NYSE: RAS) income stream to stabilize as income continues to grow.
Shares of China Agritech (Nasdaq: CAGC), Intrepid Potash (NYSE: IPI) and Mosiac (NYSE: MOS) all rose on speculation that BHP (NYSE: BHP) may seek other acquisition targets after Potash (NYSE: POT) rejected its $38 billion offer as too low.
On the downside
MannKind (Nasdaq: MNKD) announced a financing plan to raise $115 million by lending 8 million shares of its stock to Bank of America to sell.
VanceInfo Technolgies (NYSE: VIT) reported higher second quarter earnings but forecast third quarter income below estimates.
Wedbush analyst Scott Sutherland cited lukewarm reception to Research In Motion's (Nasdaq: RIMM) launch last week of its latest BlackBerry Torch for downgrading the smartphone maker.
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of more than 4 to 1 on the NYSE and by more than 3 to 1 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks gained 11 points to 626.
