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

Investing

Published: June 16, 2011 11:01 am

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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