What started out as a rather bullish day turned surprisingly bearish when push came to shove later in the session. Up almost as much as half of a percent at one point in the middle of the day, the S&P 500 fell back to loss of 0.2% for the day, closing at 2076.33.
It was much worse for some stocks, however. Woodward Inc. (NASDAQ:WWD), Zillow Group Inc. (NASDAQ:Z) and General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) all took on more than their fair share of water, though for understandable reasons.
General Motors (GM)
The media is placing the bulk of the blame for General Motor’s 2% tumble on the Canadian government.
In short, the Canadian government is selling the last 73 million shares of GM it acquired during the 2009 bailout to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS). The unregistered transaction is reported to be worth $2.7 billion.
Unsure of what Goldman plans to do with it, investors are understandably worried this overhang could sooner or later make its way back into circulation, suppressing the value of General Motors shares.
Woodward (WWD)
Aerospace and defense contractor Woodward may have topped last quarter’s earnings estimates and upped its dividend to boot. Analytical firm Jefferies still isn’t impressed though, downgrading the stock to a “hold” and sending WWWD shares down almost 6% today.
Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu acknowledges that 2014 was a good year for Woodward on the energy front, but the analyst says sales volumes would decline in 2015 as continued weakness in oil and gas prices would continue to suppress its energy business. Simultaneously, Kahyaoglu says the company’s aerospace segment isn’t positioned to drive real growth until 2017.
Jefferies also lowered its price target on WWD, from $59 to $52.
Zillow Group (Z)
The downgrade of real estate listing company Zillow Group actually materialized on Monday, and took a toll during Monday’s trading. Having had some time to think about it overnight though, the bears decided Z hadn’t been beaten down quite enough. The stock fell another 2.5% today.
The downgrade came from Barclays. Barclays’ analyst Christopher Merwin:
“Recently, traffic growth for Zillow and Trulia has started to slow, falling short of our estimates in the past two quarters. As of January 2015, traffic growth for standalone Zillow decelerated to +24% y/y, down from a peak of +69% y/y growth in 3Q13. In February, Zillow stopped reporting its monthly unique visitors altogether, feeding concerns that traffic is perhaps reaching some degree of saturation.”
Merwin went on to lower his price target on Z from $140 t0 $105. All told, the stock lost 6% of its value over the past two days and is approaching new multi-month lows.
As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
