Tag: stock market

Shares of Snap Inc. soared 6.4% to $22.81 on Wednesday, snapping a two-day losing streak. The rally follows a 21% combined decline on Monday and Tuesday from a closing high of $27.09 on Friday. Snap, the parent company of the ephemeral messaging app Snapchat, went public at a price of $17 and began trading on Thursday. The company’s splashy IPO led to a buying flurry that sent the stock up sharply in the two days after its market debut. However, a number of bearish initiations, many pointing to the company’s shaky fundamentals and calling the stock overvalued, burst the post-IPO bubble. By comparison, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed slightly higher Wednesday, up 0.6%, while both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average ended slightly lower.

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Perdue Farms said Wednesday that it has promoted Randy Day to chief executive officer, effective immediately. He is the fourth CEO in the company’s nearly century-long history. Day has been chief operating officer since May 2016, and has been with the company for 36 years. He succeeds Jim Perdue, who has been chairman and CEO since 1991. He will continue as company spokesperson and chairman. Day will serve on the the company’s board.

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Oil prices settled Wednesday at their lowest level of the year, suffering from their biggest one-day percentage drop since February 2016. U.S. government data showed that domestic-crude supplies jumped 8.2 million to 528.4 million barrels–the highest level on record. April West Texas Intermediate crude lost $2.86, or 5.4%, to settle $50.28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest finish for a front-month contract since early December. The sharp drop in crude futures was putting pressure on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index , with the energy sector posting the steepest decline of the broad-market benchmark’s 11 sectors.

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White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Wednesday said there was a “massive, massive” difference between WikiLeaks’ release of Central Intelligence Agency hacking methods and that site’s release of former Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s Gmail account. President Trump, during the campaign, had declared, “I love WikiLeaks.” “The interest and outrage that occurred last year by a lot of Democrats when it came to leaks, it’s interesting that we’re hearing not as much outrage now when it comes to national security,” Spicer said. On the Republican healthcare bill, Spicer said the amount of affordable healthcare services, not the number of people who obtain health insurance coverage, is the more important metric.

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Gold futures tallied a seventh straight session decline on Wednesday to end at their lowest level since the beginning of February. Upbeat data on U.S. private-sector jobs helped boost the dollar and fed expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its meeting next week. April gold lost $6.70, or 0.6%, to settle at $1,209.40 an ounce.

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General Electric Co. said Wednesday it is aggressively expanding German 3-D metal printing company Concept Laser GmbH, in which it purchased a 75% stake in mid-December. GE has increased the number of employees at the company to 244 from 200 and is expected to reach 350 to 400 people by early 2018. Most of the new hires will be in engineering and technicians, GE said in a statement. GE is planning a big expansion of the company’s headquarters in Lichtenfels with new space planned for manufacturing, product development, testing and administration. The company also has operations in the U.S., in Grapevine, Texas, and in China. GE has been on a buying spree of 3-D metal printing companies of late. In 2016, it acquired Sweden’s Arcam AB and Germany’s SLM Solutions Group AG for a combined $1.4 billion. Those moves were aimed at pushing the company into 3-D printing as a way to make aircraft components and other parts. 3-D printing involves using digital designs and modeling software with laser technology to create parts that are usually lighter and more durable than traditionally manufactured parts because they need less welding and machining. But much of the promise of the market is the extra design possibilities for engineers. GE shares were flat Wednesday, and are down 5.5% in the year so far. The Ark Invest’s 3D Printing ETF has gained 5% in the same time frame, while the S&P 500 has gained 5.7%.

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Shares of teen retailer Express Inc. slid to a record low Wednesday, after the company provided a downbeat outlook for the fiscal first quarter along with declines in fourth-quarter profit and sales. MKM Partners noted a 640 basis point decline in operating margins and said the outlook for the first quarter was particularly disappointing. “While we appreciate the environment was exceptionally tough in early February, guidance suggests that 1Q will not be an inflection quarter despite the reduced SKU (shelf keeping unit) count and improvement to merchandise vs. last year,” analyst Roxanne Meyer wrote in a note. “This creates a bit lower visibility for the pace of improvement in 2Q as well, and could serve as an overhang for the stock near-term, in our view.” MKM rates the stock neutral with a price target of $11. The stock fell 13% to $9.33 in early trade, and is down 51% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained about 20%.

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Shares of MGP Ingredients Inc. surged 8% Wednesday, after the supplier of distilled spirits and specialty wheat proteins and starches reported stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings. The Atchison, Kansas-based company said net income rose 28% to $8.3 million, or 48 cents a share, topping the FactSet consensus by 24%. Revenue edged down 0.4% to $81.1 million, but was slightly ahead of the consensus of $81 million. The company said higher sales of premium beverage alcohol was offset by a decline in lower margin industrial alcohol. “While yearlong softness in the industrial alcohol market offset premium beverage revenue gains, MGP’s bourbon and rye whiskeys reported strong revenue growth throughout the year, outperforming the continued steady growth of the bourbon category and contributing to gains in MGP’s gross profit and margins,” Chief Executive Gus Griffin said in a statement. The company said it’s sticking with its outlook for operating income to grow 10% to 15% annually through 2018, although sales are expected to grow modestly this year as the company continues to shift away from industrial alcohol. Shares have gained 92% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained about 20%.

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David Nason, a former Treasury Department official and now a senior executive at General Electric , has indicated he is not interested in joining the Federal Reserve board of governors, according to several press reports. Nason had been reported to be the Trump administration’s top choice to become the first ever vice chairman for bank supervision at the central bank and oversee the nation’s biggest banks. Congress carved out that position as part of the Dodd-Frank law but the Obama administration never filled it. Other candidates touted by the media for the post are John Allison, a former CEO at regional bank BB&T and Tom Hoenig, vice chairman at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., but some reports say the White House has broadened its search.

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Although the stock market is mostly higher, the number of NYSE-listed stocks that have hit new 52-week lows is higher than the number hitting 52-week highs by a 49-to-33 score. That would market the third-straight session that new lows topped new highs, which would be the longest such streak since the 8-session stretch ending Nov. 4, 2016. Back then, the S&P 500 had declined in each of those eight sessions to close at a 4 1/2-month low on Nov. 4, or 4.8% below the most recent record close of 2,190.15 on Aug. 15. In the current streak, the S&P 500 fell on Monday and Tuesday, but was up 0.1% in morning trade Wednesday, and was 1% below the latest record close of 2,395.96 reached just a week ago. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 8 points in morning trade, but the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.4%.

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