Garmin Can’t Resist the Market’s Decline
By Rick Babson, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
May 1–Garmin Ltd. shares moved against the current of the overall market for much of Monday, reaching a record high before slipping below neutral in an afternoon sell-off.
While the tech-dominated Nasdaq was falling for much of the session, Olathe-based Garmin was rising to a record high of $59.70, topping the previous high of $59.30 on Feb. 14.
Shares of the maker of navigation devices using Global Positioning System technology succumbed to the overall mood of the market in the last hour of trading and closed at $58.19, down 42 cents.
Garmin reports first-quarter results before markets open Wednesday, as does Sprint Nextel Corp. Sprint was down 18 cents Monday at $20.03. Great Plains Energy, which also reports Wednesday, fell 29 cents to $32.64.
Overall, markets were thinly mixed for much of the day before an afternoon of selling took all of the major indexes into negative territory into the close.
Wall Street weighed a slew of data that showed tame inflation, but weak spending, manufacturing and construction. Upbeat earnings from Verizon Communication and a share buyback from Merrill Lynch provided only mild support.
Verizon gained 29 cents to $38.18. Merrill Lynch gained 12 cents to $90.23.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 58.03, or 0.44 percent, and closed at 13,062.91 after reaching a trading high of 13,162.06.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 11.70, or 0.78 percent, and closed at 1,482.37.
The Nasdaq composite index fell 32.12, or 1.26 percent, and closed at 2,525.09.
Investors were pleased by the Commerce Department’s report that core inflation, as measured by personal consumption spending, was up 2.1 percent for the 12 months ending in March — lower than the 2.4 percent rise in the 12 months ending in February.
But the data also showed personal spending increased only 0.3 percent. That, along with a slim gain in construction spending and a weak reading on Midwest manufacturing, caused some restraint among investors.
Oil prices fell and gasoline prices rose after another series of refinery problems were reported over the weekend. Light sweet crude for June delivery fell 75 cents and settled at $65.71 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gasoline futures jumped 7.92 cents to $2.4405 a gallon.
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The Star’s wire services contributed to this report. To reach Rick Babson, call (816) 234-4880 or send e-mail to rbabson@kcstar.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
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