A tepid report on housing starts sent stocks into a tizzy and major indexes slipped from their year highs as solid earnings reports from Apple Inc. to Caterpillar were overlooked by anxious investors.  A rebound in dollar from its 14-month lows also added to the downward pressure and hurt commodities, sending energy and material shares lower. 

Weakness in share sent Treasury prices higher, with the 10-year closing up 13/32, to 102 11/32.  The yield fell to 3.34%, from 3.39% late Monday.  On Tuesday, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average fell 50.71 points, or 0.50%, to 10,041.48.  The broad Standard & Poor's 500-stock index retreated 6.85 points, or 0.62%, at 1,091.06 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index lost 12.85 points, or 0.59%, to 2,163.47.  Market breadth was negative.  On the New York Stock Exchange, declining shares beat those that rose in price two to one on volume of 1.24 billion

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A bit of selling pressure sent major averages lower at the end of an otherwise upbeat week on Wall Street as Bank of America and General Electric’s numbers disappointed investors.  The Dow Jones industrial average, after closing above the 10,000 mark for two successive sessions, finished just below that level.  Despite the drop, stocks managed to post impressive gains on the week even as investors grew jittery about credit losses in the financial sector. 

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) said it lost $2.2 billion during the quarter after it wrote down almost $10 billion in bad loans and General Electric’s (NYSE:GE) revenue numbers were below Street projections.  Higher loan losses aggravated investors’ concerns as Citigroup (NYSE:C) and JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) had also reported higher loan losses during the quarter.  General Electric’s (NYSE:GE) results were impacted by lower earnings at its GE Capital unit.    

The 30-share Dow Jones industrial average fell

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Commodities are on the rise today and copper ended last week at a 10-month high; both of these developments are helping shares of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX) advance by more than 7% on Monday.

< ?DART(15);?> Of course, it doesn't hurt that FCX reported second-quarter EPS that beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 100% in late July, leading to solid improvements in earnings estimates.

Volume for this Zacks #1 Rank Top Performer is nearly 13 million so far today, which is below the daily average of 20.5 million.

FCX is a leading international mining company that operates large, long-lived, geographically-diverse assets with significant proven and probable reserves of copper, gold and molybdenum. It is the only company from the Mining-Non Ferrous industry on today's 233-stock Zacks #1 Rank List.

Earnings Estimates Steadily Rise

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for

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Atticus CapitalAtticus Capital | 13 Hedge Fund HoldingsThis post is being written as part of HedgeFundBlogger.com's Investment Securities Tool which analyzes the holdings of hedge fund managers.Atticus Capital is a $13 billion hedge fund ran by Timothy Barakett. In 2005, Atticus' funds were up a combined 45%. And, they finished well over 30% for 2006. Barakett founded the firm at age 26 in 1995 and focuses on taking large, concentrated positions in companies. One of Atticus' most famous investments was Phelps Dodge, a miner which was bought out by Freeport McMoran (FCX). At one point, Atticus owned more than 9% of Phelps. And, they continue to hold their position in what is now the combined FCX. Barakett ...

Harbinger CapitalHarbinger Capital | 13F Hedge Fund HoldingsThis post is being written as part of HedgeFundBlogger.com’s Investment Securities Tool which analyzes the holdings of hedge fund managers.Harbinger Capital is a $13.8 Billion firm ran by Philip Falcone. Taken from StreetInsider, Harbinger is “a disciplined, value investor with an emphasis on intensive credit research. Its focus is on middle market companies that tend to be misunderstood or under-researched by the market. Investment approaches include:Restructuring/Bankruptcy, Turnaround, Liquidation, Event Driven, Capital Structure Arbitrage, Short Sale and Special Situations.” At one point during this year, they were up as much as 42% (more on that below).So, now that we’ve got a background on Harbinger Capital, let’s …

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc. (FCX) reported second quarter EPS of $2.62, down 23.2% year-over-year, primarily due to lower sales volumes of copper and gold because of mine sequencing at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia.

Freeport-McMoRan was able to offset the increase in costs with the help of high copper and gold prices. The company has a strong cash flow position and several growth projects in its pipeline. The merger with Phelps Dodge Corporation has positioned FCX as the second-largest copper producer and the largest publicly traded copper company globally. We maintain our positive outlook and Buy rating on the stock. Our target price of $99.75 is based on around 8.9x our 2008 EPS estimate.

Freeport-McMoRan has initiated plans for incremental expansions at the Morenci, Sierrita and Bagdad mines in Arizona and the Cerro Verde mine in Peru. The company estimates that these projects would provide incremental production ramping up to

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