Category: Stock Market News

Oil futures edged higher Friday, with ongoing signs that major oil producers are sticking to their pledge to cut back output helping prices tally a weekly gain of roughly 0.5%. However, expectations for higher output from Libya and the U.S., which aren’t part of the production cut agreement, kept price gains in check. February West Texas Intermediate crude rose 23 cents, or 0.4%, to settle at $53.99 a barrel.

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Theranos Inc. announced Friday that it has cut 155 of its core employees as it tries to commercialize its miniLab testing platform. It will keep 220 staffers. Teams have been organized around product development, regulatory and commercial benchmarks, the company said on Friday. Theranos is involved in a number of lawsuits, including a $140 million case filed by Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. alleging breach of contract, the fallout from infractions discovered at the blood-testing company’s lab last year, as the Wall Street Journal reported. Theranos was valued at $9 billion at its peak in 2014.

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President-elect Donald Trump said Friday there was “absolutely no effect” on the outcome of the election despite consistent attempts by hackers to break into U.S. governmental institutions. Trump met with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday, a day after they told Congress Russia was responsible for pre-election hacking. Trump has disagreed with that conclusion. Trump said he will appoint a team to give him a cybersecurity plan within 90 days of taking office.

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Multiple people have been shot and killed Friday at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, according to multiple reports. According to a tweet from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and CNN, a gunman is being held in custody. CNN reported that at least nine people were injured in the shooting. The news comes amid heightened concerns about global terrorism and as the Dow Jones Industrial Average is attempting to crack a psychological milestone of 20,000.

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Neiman Marcus Group Inc. requested to withdraw its initial public offering Friday, saying the IPO is “not in its best interests” at this time. The company filed to go public in August 2015. The company did not elaborate further on the reason, but other traditional retailers such as Macy’s and Sears have been suffering as consumers move online. The prospectus has not yet been declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission and no securities have been sold in connection with the offering. It requested that all fees already paid to the SEC related to the filing be “credited for future use.”

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Gold futures settled lower on Friday, as strength in the U.S. dollar and equities dulled investment demand for the precious metal. Prices, however, gained about 1.8% for the week, buoyed by uncertainty surrounding the pace of interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve. February gold fell $7.90, or 0.7%, for the session to settle at $1,173.40 an ounce.

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Data from Baker Hughes Friday revealed that the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil climbed by 4 to 529 rigs this week. That marks the tenth weekly climb in a row. The total active U.S. rig count, which includes oil and natural-gas rigs, also rose 7 to 665, according to Baker Hughes. February West Texas Intermediate crude was up 25 cents, or 0.5%, at $54.01 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, little changed from the level it traded at before the data.

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Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker said interest rates may need to rise “more briskly than markets anticipate” with unemployment at or near sustainable employment and inflation “very close” to the 2% target. Lacker, considered a hawkish member, said he expects 2% GDP growth in 2017, reflecting some probability of a fiscal boost, before growth slows to 1.75% in 2018 and beyond. Lacker isn’t a voting Federal Open Market Committee member this year.

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SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. announced Friday that Tilikum, one of the park’s well-known Orca whales, died this morning. SeaWorld said the official cause of death is yet to be determined but that the whale had a bacterial lung infection. The whale was estimated to be 36 years old and came to SeaWorld from Sealand of the Pacific in Canada 25 years ago. Tilikum was featured in the documentary “Blackfish” and is the whale that was involved in the death of a trainer at Orlando’s SeaWorld. Shares of SeaWorld were down 0.4% Friday compared to the S&P 500 , which was up less than 1%.

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Bitcoin prices fell on Friday after the People’s Bank of China warned local digital-currency exchanges that they must ensure that all trading complies with local laws and regulations. The statement, issued early Friday, sparked a selloff that carried the price to $900 a coin , down from a more than three-year high of $1,100 reached earlier in the week. Over the past two days, bitcoin has lost nearly 20% of its value, though it remains up more than 100% from its January 2015 low. Bitcoin watchers cite several factors, including a weakening Chinese yuan and rising geopolitical uncertainty in the West, as the reasons behind the digital currency’s 2016 surge. “The Chinese authorities have given a slap on the wrist to the bitcoin industry,” said Charles Hayter, chief executive officer and founder of CryptoCompare, which provides data and analytics about the cryptocurrency market.

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