Category: Stock Market News

Nordstrom Inc. rose 8% late Thursday after the retailer reported third-quarter adjusted per-share earnings well above expectations and sales in line with Wall Street’s forecast. Nordstrom said it lost $10 million, or 6 cents a share, in the quarter, reversing net earnings of $81 million in the year-ago period. Adjusted for one-time earnings, the retailer earned $148 million, or 84 cents a share. Sales rose 7.2% to $3.5 billion, compared with $3.2 billion a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected Nordstrom to report adjusted earnings of 51 cents a share on sales of $3.48 billion. Comparable-store sales rose 2.4%. Nordstrom also raised its fiscal year 2016 outlook for adjusted earnings per share to $2.85 to $2.95, from $2.60 a share to $2.75 a share, to incorporate the better-than-expected quarterly results.

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President-elect Donald Trump will appear on the CBS program “60 Minutes,” on Sunday, the network announced Thursday. Leslie Stahl will interview Trump and members of his family.

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Oil futures settled lower on Thursday for the first time in four sessions. A monthly report from the International Energy Agency showed that crude output from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries rose to a record level in October, ahead of the group’s meeting Nov. 30 to hash out details of a plan to cutback on output. December West Texas Intermediate crude fell 61 cents, or 1.4%, to settle at $44.66 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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The rally in the broader market indexes, outside of the technology friendly Nasdaq Composite is not being supported by strong internal readings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 258 points in afternoon trade, the S&P 500 rallied 0.4% and the Russell 2000 index of small-capitalization stocks ran up 1.7%. But on the New York Stock Exchange, the number of declining stocks outnumbered the number of advancers by a 1,543-to-1,488 margin. However, within the Dow, advancers were beating decliners by a score of 19 to 11, and advancers were topping decliners 330-175 in the S&P 500. The Nasdaq was just the opposite, as the Composite was down 0.5%, but on the exchange, advancers were outnumbering decliners 1,691 to 1,002.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average is soaring 264 points in afternoon trade toward a record close, as it stretched its win streak to four sessions. The Dow has now run up 967 points during this win streak, which would be the best four-day point gain since it climbed 1,174 points in the four-session stretch ending Nov. 26, 2008. Back then, the rally had followed a two-day plunge of 872 points to a 5 1/2-year low. The current stretch of gains immediately followed a seven-day losing streak–a loss of 311 points–to four-month low. The 2008 streak equated to a percentage gain of 15.5%; the current gain is just 5.4%.

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Advisors to President-elect Donald Trump have floated the possibility of naming J.P. Morgan boss Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary, CNBC reported Thursday. Citing two people familiar with the matter, the report added that Dimon said he would not be interested in the role. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett had suggested in the past that Dimon would make a good Treasury secretary. Dimon’s name was previously mentioned as a possible replacement for Timothy Geithner. Dimon has ruled himself out in the past, saying he was not interested in the job. There are reports that Trump wants to appoint Steven Mnuchin, his finance chair and a former Goldman Sachs banker, to the post.

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Shares of Fitbit Inc. rose more than 3% Thursday following an unconfirmed SEC filing of a potential takeover bid. According to the filing, which was listed on Fitbit’s website, ABM Capital LTD, whose address is listed in Shanghai, China, offered to buy all of Fitbit’s Class A common shares for $12.50 each. The phone number for ABM listed in the filing did not work, and MarketWatch could not reach the financial company for comment. Fitbit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for the SEC would not comment on whether the filing was legitimate. Shares of Fitbit traded around $8.73 in recent trade, bucking a broader tech-market sell-off, with the Nasdaq Composite falling by 1%, or more than 55 points. Fitbit has been beaten down in recent quarters by weak sales. Its shares have fallen 42% in the past three months and more than 75% in the past year, vastly underperforming both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 .

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Tech stocks sold off sharply for the second consecutive day Thursday following the Republican sweep of the White House and Congress. The heavily tech-weighted NASDAQ Composite dropped nearly 80 points, or 1.7%, while the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund , whose biggest holdings include Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. , fell 2.6%, and the PowerShares QQQ Trust , another popular tech-sector ETF, fell 2.5%. Those declines came despite an 80-point rally for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and a 9-point decline for the S&P 500 . Among the biggest decliners were Google, down 4%; Apple, down 3.2%; and Microsoft Corp. , down 3.5%. Shares of Tesla Motors Inc. , Advanced Micro Devices Inc. , Netflix Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. all fell around 5%. President-elect Donald J. Trump warned of a tech bubble during his general-election campaign, and said that he would force companies that manufacture most of their goods in China – especially common among electronics makers – to move business back to the U.S.

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U.S. households intend to spend an average of $563 this year on gifts, down slightly from $576 last year, according to The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey. “Continued job and wage growth, and a confident consumer are likely to make this another good holiday season for retailers,” said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at The Conference Board. Still, more than 60% of consumers expect at least a quarter of their purchases to be discounted. More than 75% say at least some of their gifts will be purchased online. The SPDR S&P Retail ETF is up 1.2% for the year so far.

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Natural-gas futures fell further Thursday after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that supplies of the commodity rose 54 billion cubic feet for the week ended Nov. 4. That was above the 51 billion-cubic-foot rise expected by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts. Total stocks now stand at 4.017 trillion cubic feet, up 47 billion cubic feet from a year ago and 189 billion cubic feet above the five-year average, the government said. December natural gas fell 9.7 cents, or 3.6% from Wednesday’s settlement to $2.593 per million British thermal units. It traded at $2.611 before the data.

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