Walgreen --- Mike (medium)
>> pilgrim baxter will pay $100 million to settle regulators’ claims that it allowed favored investors to trade mutual fund shares at the expense of smaller clients. baxter is the u.s. mutual fund unit of the british insurance company old mutual. the securities and exchange commission imposed a financial penalty, as well, of $50 million in restitution of another $40 million. pilgrim baxter will cut its fees by $10 million over five years in the settlement, all coming from a case started by new york% -attorney general eliot spitzer. co-founders gary pilgrim and harold baxter face civil claims by state and federal regulators for allowing market timing of the company’s funds. a lawyer for kenneth lay, the former founder and chief executive of enron, asked to meet with u.s. prosecutors.% a person familiar with the case says the lawyer wants to discuss the investigation into fraud that triggered the energy company’s collapse. the federal grand jury is two weeks away from being asked to hand up an indictment of mr. lay. according to the “houston chronicle,” a former prosecutor says he doubts lay is seeking a plea bargain offering cooperation in return for% leniency because there are no higher ranking officials who might be the target of the investigation. shares of the nation’s largest drug store chain closed higher. this is walgreens reporting third-quarter profit up 16%. net income coming in at $344 million, working out to 33 cents a share, a penny better than estimates, up from 29 a year ago. sales in the period ending may 31 rose 15%, $9.5 billion worth of stuff out the door at walgreen. the company pushed surface -- services such as digital printing and film processing. prescription sales also rose as walgreens expands into states such as california and texas with growing numbers of retirees. let’s look at walgreen, a company founded in 1901, originally. and they became public in 1948. what i’ve done is put together a 20-year chart. have a look president you can see the exponential rise in the logarithmic chart, steady as she goes.% what’s interesting, you see this high water mark coming in about late february, 1999. $33 a share. remember that figure, folks, because you can see the straight line over here, the trend line. that’s pretty much where we are so over that period of time, the shares of walgreen have gone essentially nowhere while statistically they’ve gone about 9% higher at a time when the s&p 500 -- not including dividends―down in price alone about 8%. relatively it’s good but the company itself has certainly hit the wall from this level of march in 1999. it traded higher at one point but has subsequently been in a downtrend since the high water mark in november. we see two red lines here, technical resistance. first at $37.50. we tried once and failed to go through. the second level, if we broke that, would be at 40. and last but not least
