Monsanto stock takes a plunge

Agriculture stocks like Monsanto (MON), Deere (DE) and Bunge (BG) are in free fall for a second straight day on no apparent news. The declines are hardly shocking, coming as they do just days after the stocks hit 52-week highs. Still, how often do you find stocks of this size falling between 6 percent and 10 percent for no apparent reason? At The Wall Street Journal, Scott Patterson surmises that the action is being driven by an exchange-traded fund called Market Vectors Global Agribusiness, which sports the ticker MOO. He also says the selloff started with the release of weak manufacturing data that could point to reduced demand for ethanol, which has been the bull-market story behind much of the rise in these stocks. Regardless of the action in its stock - which at a recent $101 has lost a quarter of its value over two days - Monsanto believes the future is very bright indeed for its genetically engineered crops business, the one dubbed Frankenfoods by critics. “It’s still like being back in the ’60s with computers,” one exec told shareholders at the annual meeting Wednesday, the Associated Press reports. Now that’s a frightening thought... This article is from dailybriefing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/01/17/monsanto-stock-takes-a-plunge