The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: April 20 Companies With The Worst News

Investing

Published: April 20, 2011 10:10 am

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) took a big hit in the news as shareholders sued over Sokol trades in Lubrizol. American Electric Power and NRG both pulled bad press over nuclear power facilities. Harley Davidson was hammered by the press because of bad earnings

The Flame Index started as a research tool in 2008 at the NY Innovation Design Lab (nyidlab). It was used as a general metric to evaluate companies and their risk in the media. Publicly traded Fortune 500 companies are used as a measure to calculate an overall market of negative news and the companies are ranked within that market

Rank	Company	Ticker	Score	Change in Rank	Comments
1	Johnson & Johnson	JNJ	56.24	0	Good earnings
2	Berkshire Hathaway	BRK.A	36.304	+634	Shareholders sue over Sokol Lubrizol trades
3	Bank of America Corp.	BOA	31.831	0	Modest earnings
4	Citigroup	C	31.405	0	Poor earnings
5	Community Health Systems	CYH	29.549	+1	Legal fight over Tenet takeover continues
6	Transocean Ltd	RIG	27.116	+68	Still embroiled in Deepwater disaster
7	Texas Instruments	TXN	24.581	+18	Mediocre earnings
8	Goldman Sachs Group	GS	23.021	+73	Better than expected earnings as firm shrinks
9	Tenet Healthcare	THC	22.835	+3	Fight with CYH continues
10	American Electric Power	AEP	22.801	+83	Plagued by nuclear power worries
2	Berkshire Hathaway	BRK.A	36.304	+634	Sokol insider trading problems
10	American Electric Power	AEP	22.801	+83	Nuclear power fears
14	NRG Energy	NRG	21.88	+693	Kills two planned nuclear power facilities
18	Harley-Davidson	HOG	20.595	+636	Earnings miss Wall St. estimates
23	Bank of New York Mellon Corp.	BK	19.647	+496	Extremely poor earnings news

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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