Cable Rides Market Surge
Dow Rises Nearly 500 Points After Record-Breaking Loss
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 9/30/2008 3:09:00 PM
A day after posting its single biggest one-day drop in history, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged nearly 500 points on Tuesday, taking cable stocks along for the ride.
The Dow, down 777 points on Monday after Congress rejected a $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan, finished Tuesday up 485 points to 10,850.66 as investors became optimistic that a new plan would be coming soon.
Cable stocks were hammered in Monday’s market plunge, but began to tick up on Tuesday with Comcast leading the charge, closing at $19.63 each, up 9%, $1.62 per share. Next was Time Warner Cable, up 2.3% (55 cents) to $24.20; Cablevision Systems, up 1% (26 cents) to $25.16; and Mediacom Communications, up 0.5% (3 cents each) to$5.92 per share. Charter Communications was the lone cable operator stock to decline, down 10.9% (9 cents each) to 73 cents per share.
On the satellite TV front, Dish Network began to get back some of Monday’s losses, gaining $1.03 (5.2%) to $21 per share. DirecTV advanced 10.7% ($2.53 per share) to $26.18 each.
Programmer stocks also began to claw back from the abyss, with Viacom gaining $1.20 per share (5.1%) to $24.86 each; Disney up 96 cents each (3.2%) to $30.69 per share; and News Corp. up 8 cents per share (0.66%) to $12.15 each.
