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The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: Companies With The Worst Press Coverage (6/16)

Homeowners get clobbered in the press as the housing depression worsens.

Hackers hit ADP servers and worry grows about safety of payroll data.

Market revolt about Target 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
8 Automatic Data Processing ADP 27.893 +167  Hackers hit its servers
9 Comerica CMA 27.12 +82  New capital ratios could hurt earnings
15 Morgan Stanley MS 25.317 +334  Worries about position in Greek debt?
28 Oracle ORCL 21.623 +197  Sued by HP about an “unfair” use of software
33 Hewlett-Packard HPQ 20.7 +580  Sues Oracle over software use
37 Target TGT 19.498 +329  Earnings were nothing special
39 Gap GPS 18.724 +506  Skepticism about move into Europe
41 Lennar LEN 18.22 +150  Home builders say market is more deader than before
44 Toll Brothers TOL 18.08 +234  Ditto
45 Smithfield Foods SFD 18.07 +396  Nice earnings but high capex

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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