Following heavy selling early Friday after the Senate failed to come to
an agreement Thursday night on the $14 billion package to keep General
Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC driving, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
somewhat surprisingly ended up 64.59 points to close at 8,629.68.
Driving the markets into positive territory was news that the U.S.
Treasury Department may consider allowing Detroit to hide under the
thinly stretched Troubled Asset Relief Plan, which was originally
created for financial services companies.
Continue reading below
However,
shareholders at the two publicly traded U.S. automakers and the
automakers themselves don't seem too convinced that a Treasury rescue
will be the answer. GM slid 4.37% to close at $3.94 per share on Friday
after it had announced that it would idle production at U.S. and
Canadian assembly plants for at least part of the first quarter. Ford
Motor Co., which has not asked for the government's help, slipped 1.49%
to $2.48 per share.
Another industry that may very well be in need
of a bailout, the hedge fund arena, had a relatively positive day on
Wall Street. Within the small universe of publicly traded hedge funds,
two of the bigger funds, Fortress Investment Group LLC and GLG Partners
Inc., closed up 11.19% to $1.59 per share and 2.78% to $2.22 per share,
respectively. Some preliminary redemption reports published this week
tallied November withdrawals for the industry as lower than the prior
month, a glint of hope amid an industry pummeled by withdrawal requests
and performance losses. However, withdrawals may have slowed in
November as many of the hedge funds are suspending redemptions, GLG and
Fortress included. -
Michael Rudnick
