Category: Stock Market News

Oil prices settled sharply higher Friday, buoyed by unconfirmed reports of a unit shutdown at a major U.S. refinery, as well as a weekly decline in the active drilling rig count for oil. September WTI crude rose $1.42, or 3%, to settle at $48.51 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was its highest finish in a week, but it still lost 0.6% from last Friday’s finish.

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Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is taking two months of paternity leave as his wife expects their second child, Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook Friday. Zuckerberg said he will take a month off after the birth and then will later take off the month of December. He noted that Facebook offers four months of paternity leave. Shares of Facebook were up less than 1% Friday afternoon.

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Gold prices touched their highest intraday level of the year on Friday, briefly topping $1,300 an ounce before pulling back to settle lower for the session. “The selloff is unusual as there was no data or market news to account for the [roughly] $15 drop” from the day’s highs, said Mark O’Byrne, research director at GoldCore. “Risk aversion has eased with stocks eking out small gains and some traders may have decided to take profits at the $1,300 level.” December gold fell 80 cents, or less than 0.1%, to settle at $1,291.60 an ounce after trading as high as $1,306.90. For the week, it fell 0.2%.

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Baker Hughes on Friday reported that the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil fell by 5 to 763 rigs this week. The total active U.S. rig count, which includes oil and natural-gas rigs, also declined by 3 to 946, according to Baker Hughes. Oil prices added a bit more to earlier gains, with September West Texas Intermediate crude up $1.34, or 2.9%, for the session at $48.43 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It traded at $48.38 before the data.

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U.S. stocks rose to session highs Friday following a report that President Donald Trump has told senior aides he has decided to fire strategist Stephen Bannon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27 points, or 0.1%, to 21,778. The S&P 500 index gained 8 points, or 0.3%, for 2,438. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 30 points, or 0.5%, to 6,252. The New York Times reported that Trump has discussed how and when to dismiss Bannon, while a person close to Bannon told the Times that he had submitted his resignation on Aug. 7.

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Shares of shipping company Matson Inc. were suffering the biggest selloff since they started trading in January 1972, amid concerns over a new competitor to its West Coast-to-Hawaii shipping business. The stock’s price drop of $7.09, or 24%, was shaving about 43 points off the Dow Jones Transportation Average , which was up 3 points in midday trade. The selloff topped the previous record of the $6.76, or 16.2%, drop on Nov. 8, 2016, according to FactSet data. TOTE Inc. announced Thursday plans to establish a new domestic shipping service to Hawaii, with plans to use new environmentally advanced containerships in 2020. Stephens Inc. analyst Jack Atkins downgraded Matson to equal weight from overweight and slashed his stock price target to $23 from $36, citing competition concerns in Matson’s core shipping lane. “If it materializes, we think this could be a material headwind to profitability and, as such, we would anticipate significant multiple contraction for MATX in the interim and an extended period of volatility and uncertainty for the stock,” Atkins wrote in a note to clients. Wells Fargo’s Michael Webber downgraded Matson to underperform from market perform and cut his target to $22 from $35. The stock has tumbled 37% year to date, while the S&P 500 has gained 8.8%.

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President Trump has decided to remove Stephen Bannon, his chief strategist, media reports said Friday. The New York Times said Trump has told senior aides he is removing Bannon, and the Drudge Report said he was “moving on.” Earlier Friday, Axios reported a decision on Bannon was imminent and that officials expected him to be fired. The reported decision to remove Bannon comes in the wake of Trump’s controversial comments on the violence in Charlottesville.

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Oil turned decidedly higher in Friday trading to touch fresh session highs, with prices looking to recoup some of the week’s losses ahead of the expiration on Tuesday of the September futures contracts for West Texas Intermediate oil. September WTI crude rose 54 cents, or 1.2%, to trade at $47.63 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading as low as $46.78. October Brent crude traded at $52.18 a barrel, up $1.15, or 2.3%. WTI was still trading lower for the week, set to lose 2.1%, but Brent turned up about 0.1% for the week.

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Shares of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment Inc. were trading at $12.25 Friday morning, above the company’s issue price, in the stock’s debut on the Nasdaq. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, a video-focused offshoot of the book series, sold 2.5 million shares at $12 a share in a Reg A+ offering. The offering means that non-accredited investors were able to buy shares, and thus have equity in the company. HCFP/Capital Markets LLC, The Benchmark Company LLC and Weild & Co were the underwriters on the offering.

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Shares of Deere & Co. tumbled 7.7% in active morning trade Friday, putting them on course for the biggest one-day loss in 6 years, after disappointing fiscal third-quarter results prompted a downgrade at Baird. Volume ballooned to 4.8 million shares, already more than double the full-day average of 2.1 million shares. Analyst Mircea Dobre cut his rating to neutral, after being at outperform since Oct. 31, and dropped his stock price target to $130 from $140. “Stock had a good run, it’s about to get tougher going forward,” Dobre wrote in a note to clients. “We thought 3Q would mark the last big operating beat quarter of FY17 before focus fully shifted to FY18…this proved not to be the case.” Deere reported earlier Friday a quarterly profit that beat expectations, but sales that missed. The stock’s decline Friday was the biggest since it lost 8.1% on Aug. 21, 2015. The stock was still up 10.9% year to date, while the SPDR Industrial Select Sector ETF has gained 8.1% and the S&P 500 has advanced 8.4%.

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