| Bulls Break Free On Wall Street |
| Aug-16-2012 |
| Keywords: stocks, climb higher, bulls, cisco, walmart, angela merkel, germany, euro |
Stocks on Wall Street break out of a recent funk, the S&P 500 nearing 4-month highs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 85-points on the day. The Nasdaq Composite gained 35, the S&P 500 finished with a 10-point gain.
Stocks began the session trading sideways, finding little traction following mixed earnings results and another round of contradictory economic reports.
Weekly jobless claims last week rose 2,000, inline with expectations totaling 366,000 claims. The four-week moving average of claims declined by 5,500 to 363,750, slipping to the lowest level since late March.
Housing starts in July a bit of a disappointment, falling 1.1 percent. The silver-lining in that report, building permits issued during the month jumped 6.8%, reaching the highest level in almost 4-years.
Meanwhile, manufacturers in the Philadelphia region continue to struggle. The Philly Fed index for August in negative territory, indicating contraction for a fourth straight month.
Earnings a mixed bag as well. Cisco Systems by far the best performer on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, up almost 10%. Cisco topped earnings targets, and raised its dividend to investors by 75%.
Wal-Mart not benefitting from its earnings beat. Investors driving the shares of the world's largest retail 3% lower after the company misses sales targets and issued a disappointing current quarter outlook.
Enthusiasm surrounding Cisco Systems helped to lift the broader technology sector. Other well know technology companies also turning in strong gains, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle all up more than 1% on the day.
Facebook tumbled another 6%, closing at a record low of $19.87 a share. Insiders today free to sell their holdings in the social media giant as the company's stock lockup expired. The expiration opened the floodgates to an additional 268 million shares, more than doubling the number of Facebook shares available on the open market.
Meanwhile Electronic Arts rallied 5.5% after the New York Post reported the video-game publisher is exploring a sale to private equity firms KKR and Providence Equity Partners.
The stock market as a whole got a lift from encouraging news out of Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying Germany is committed to do what's necessary to maintain the euro, mirroring comments made by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi last month.
Those comments pushing the euro higher against the dollar, helping to drive dollar traded commodity prices higher. Crude oil jumped $1.27 a barrel, or 1.35%, to settle at $95.60. Gold picked up $12.40 a ounce, or 0.77%, to $1,616.10. |
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Posted by Lou Dobbs Staff at 6:00 PM Email to a friend |
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