Category: Stock Market News

Target Corporation said it had a strong start to Black Friday sales and Target.com saw its biggest day ever, with double digit growth, in the lead up. The store started its deals on Wednesday. Televisions were a top selling product and Target sold more than 3,200 TVs every minute in the first hour of the store opening. Other popular items included Apple Inc.’s iPad Air 2, iPad Pro and Apple Watch Series 1, gaming systems and wearables such as the Fitbit Charge HR. Target said it sold five times more wireless headphones on Black Friday compared to last year. Shares of Target were up 1% in premarket trade. Shares of Target have fallen 8% year-to-date, compared to the S&P 500’s gain of 8%.

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Shares of Swiss drug company Actelion Ltd. surged 14% Friday, after a report that Johnson & Johson has approached the company with a view to a takeover. Bloomberg News said talks are at an early stage. The Swiss company has a market capitalization of about $17 billion. It has brought new lung treatments to market that are expected to reduce its reliance on its Tracleer drug, which is used to treat high bloody pressure that affects arteries in the lungs, according to Bloomberg. Johnson & Johnson shares were not active premarket, but are up 10% in the year so far, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 9.5%.

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The U.S. government is raising the allowable limit on some credit-card late fees, and American Express Co. is the first issuer to act on it, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. From January, the company will charge customers that are late on more than one payment in a six-month period a fee of up to $38, $1 more than it charged previously. That places the issuer at the maximum allowed under the new guidelines from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. American Express shares were not yet active in premarket trade, but are up 4.8% in the year so far, while the S&P 500 has gained 7.9%.

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Florence Henderson, best known for her role as mom Carol Brady in the hit 1970s television series “The Brady Bunch,” has died at the age of 82, her manager confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday. Henderson, who died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Thursday night, had suffered heart failure, according to her manager Kayla Pressman, the AP said. “The Brady Bunch,” a sitcom about a blended family with two single parents and their six combined children, had a successful run for Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC Television Network between 1969 and 1974.

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An employee of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. was compromised and exposed personal information of thousands of sailors in the U.S. Navy, the military branch announced Wednesday. According to the Navy, an HPE worker’s laptop was accessed by unknown individuals, who were able to access the names and social security numbers of 134,386 current and former sailors. “The Navy takes this incident extremely seriously–this is a matter of trust for our sailors,” Vice Adm. Robert Burke, the Navy’s chief of Naval personnel, said in the announcement. “We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by this breach.” HPE, then part of the combined Hewlett-Packard Co., won a $3.5 billion contract to handle the Navy’s communications network in 2013; the deal runs through 2018. HPE shares, which gained 3% in Wednesday’s regular session after earnings were released Tuesday afternoon, dropped 1.8% in late trading.

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The Russell 2000 Index climbed 0.6% Wednesday to extend its win streak to a 14 sessions, the longest in over 20 years. The small-capitalization company tracker has soared 16% since the streak began, compared with the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s gain of 6.4% over the same time. The Russell 2000’s current win streak is the longest since the 15-session stretch ending Feb. 6, 1996. Back then, the index gained only 6.1% during it’s streak. The Russell 2000 has now closed at a record high for the eighth-straight session, while the Dow’s record run is at three days. Chart watchers view leadership by the small-cap stocks as encouraging, as it suggests investors’ appetite for risk has increased. The average market cap for the Russell 2000 members is $1.82 billion, according to FTSE Russell, while the average market cap for Dow components is more than 100 times that at $183.98 billion, according to an analysis of FactSet data.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 ended at records for a third consecutive session after modest gains Wednesday. The Russell 2000 index of small stocks rose for a 14th straight session to also end at a record. However, the Nasdaq Composite declined slightly, retreating from the all-time high set on Tuesday. Trading volume was lower than usual due to investors eager to head out for the Thanksgiving Holiday. The S&P 500 gained 1.72 points, or less than 0.1%, to 2,204.66. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 59.31 points, or 0.3%, to 19,083.18. The Nasdaq Composite ended the session off 5.67 points, or 0.1%, at 5,380.68. The Russell 2000 index rose 6.16 points, or 0.5%, to 1,340.50, according to preliminary FactSet data.

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Utilities is by far the biggest loser of the 11 S&P 500’s sectors on Wednesday, as the high-yielding sector is weighed down by the 10-year Treasury yield’s rise toward a 16-month high. The SPDR Utilities Select Sector ETF slumped 1%, and has now lost 5.4% since the election. The concern is that President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to boost infrastructure spending will lift Treasury yields by increasing economic growth and inflation and by increasing the budget deficit. The more Treasury yields rise, the less attractive high-yielding stocks like utilities are to investors. The 10-year yield has spiked up 0.5 percentage points since the election. The SPDR Utilities ETF (XLU) has an effective dividend yield of 3.5%, compared with the S&P 500’s aggregate dividend yield of 2.1%, according to FactSet. The XLU has now lost 12% since the July 6 record close of $52.98. It was still up 7.3% year to date, while the S&P 500 has gained 7.8%.

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Oil futures settled slightly lower on Wednesday. Traders weighed a weekly decline in U.S. crude supplies, a rise in the number of active domestic oil rigs and ongoing chatter among major oil producers ahead of a key meeting next week. January West Texas Intermediate crude fell 7 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $47.96 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Jose Cuervo, the tequila production company, has delayed its initial public offering due to Donald Trump’s presidential win, according to Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter. Jose Cuervo products are produced in Mexico and the election of Trump has had a negative impact on Mexican stocks and currency. The iShares MSCI Mexico Capped ETF has fallen 18% since the Nov. 8 election. The Mexican peso has lost 13% of its value against the dollar since the election. Reuters reports that the company will reevaluate plans in January.

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