A low volume flat session
Index & Sector performance 11/25/13
The Market:
Monday’s trading started with some optimism but that was sold in early trading and the market started climbing back toward the highs of the day after a pullback. The rally efforts topped around 2:30 pm EST and the market then declined into the close but after the dust settled it was a flat day. Again volumes were on the light side.
Today’s economic calendar was light with only Pending Home Sales on the docket and came in worse than expected posting a -0.6% when 2.2% was expected. Tomorrow we get more housing data with Building Permits, Housing Starts and Case/ Shiller as well as CB Consumer Confidence and the Richmond Manufacturing Index.
Story Stocks:
Dow stock Wal-Mart (WMT) was in the news as they announced the successor to Mike Duke as CEO will be Doug McMillon who is currently CEO of Wal-Mart International. The change will be effective February 1, 2014. Often changes at the top are not looked favorable unless the stock is vastly underperforming but in this case WMT added to a strong year closing up 0.78% and at a new 52 week high on the news.
BlackBerry (BBRY) continues to clean house after recently replacing its CEO the company now announced that they are replacing the CFO (chief financial officer), COO (chief operating officer) and CMO (chief marketing officer).
The S&P 500 announced that they will be removing J.C. Penney (JCP) from the index as of Friday 11/29/13 and Allegion (ALLE) will be taking its place. ALLE is a spin-off from Ingersoll-Rand plc (IR) which will begin trading on 12/1/13. JCP shrugged off the news and closed up 3.61% on the day.
Uni-Pixel (UNXL) moved sharply lower after announcing Friday after the close that the SEC issued subpoenas relating to the company’s InTouch Sensors. Even after closing off the lows made earlier in the session, UNXL still closed down 12.75% for the day. The company makes films for displays and touch screens as well as other electronics.
Another name moving sharply lower was ADT (ADT) which was down much more on the open but rallied back to close down only 5.79%. The move was after the company announced they agreed to purchase over 10 million shares from activist investor Corvex Management and further that Corvex founder Keith Meister will resign from ADT’s board.
The following noteworthy companies are scheduled to report earnings before tomorrow’s open: HRL, TIF, PLL, SIG, EV, DSW, BKS
Analyst Comments:
Upgrades 11/25/13
Downgrades 11/25/13
Initiations 11/25/13
Price Target Changes 11/25/13