Can General Electric Hold 5+ Year Highs? (GE)

General Electric (NYSE:GE) shares are trading higher today after Wall Street greeted its earnings decently, but very much greeted the increased share buyback plans to a $14 Billion total plan.  Shares are about 1% off of the intraday highs of $40.17 and are just a hair under the previous $39.77 yearly high from last month.  Wall Street is also content with an exit from the sub-prime slime.

With more than two-hours left in the day shares are already more than 50% above average daily trading, and the market cap is back over $400 Billion.  Options traders are still not really betting for a rapid break-out above $40.00 before next Friday’s options expiration.  We have a lot of earnings next week and the market still acts like it wants to go higher, so stay tuned. 

Today may finally put to rest those old concerns and desires to break-up the giant conglomerate, pardon the redundency.

If you press me to it, I would also venture a guess that with Energizer Holdings (NYSE:ENR) still managing to trade higher after a ‘conglomerization goal’ acquisition of Playtex (NYSE:PYX) is an endorsement that Main Street doesn’t feel the conglomerate model is a dead one.  The trend back into mega-caps is also in its favor.

UBS this week maintained a $45.00 target, and we’d expect mostly positive analyst calls on Monday based on the response we have seen so far today.

Jon C. Ogg
July 13, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.