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Wall Street rises as investors shrug off Ebola worries
U.S. stocks were lately in positive territory Friday afternoon after a choppy morning, as investors appeared to shrug off fears of New York's first Ebola case, concentrating instead on stronger-than-expected housing data and quarterly earnings.

As of just before noon in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 94 points at 16,772, while the Nasdaq rose 19 points to 4,473 and the S&P 500 added 10 points to 1,961, with all three major indexes on track for weekly gains.

U.S stock futures were down earlier today after the diagnosis of a New York City Ebola case sparked fears. In New York City, Dr. Craig Spencer, who had just come back from West Africa, preliminarily tested positive for Ebola at the city's Bellevue Hospital on Thursday. He arrived at JFK airport a week ago, and according to reports, his movements since have become difficult to track. He took the subway to go bowling in Brooklyn Wednesday night, and went home via an Uber car, according to the New York Times.

The news was offset by economic data, after the Commerce Department said that sales of new homes in September rose slightly to an annual rate of 467,000, a six year high. Economists had expected sales of 455,000.

In corporate activity, shares of Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) jumped 3% after the consumer products company announced plans to split off its Duracell battery business while also reporting fiscal first quarter results in line with estimates.

UPS (NYSE:UPS) shares climbed 1% after its results topped forecasts, helped by higher daily package volumes and strong performance overseas.

Ford (NYSE:F) shares dropped 5% as despite its third quarter results topping expectations, profit fell sharply on lower production and earnings in North America and losses in Europe.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) rallied 1.6% after reporting last night better-than-expected earnings and revenue, supported by strong hardware and cloud software sales.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), meanwhile, fell more than 7% after reporting late Thursday revenue and earnings that missed analysts' estimates on slow sales of its Fire phone.

Pandora Media (NYSE:P) shares also dropped more than 15% as despite reporting better-than-expected quarterly results, the company posted fewer listeners added than anticipated.

In other stock news, AMC Networks (NASDAQ:AMCX) is buying a 49.9% stake in BBC America for $200 million, and will take operational control of the channel, including affiliate and advertising sales. BBC Worldwide will retain a 50.1% stake in BBC America.

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) is launching a new $11 billion stock buyback plan, lowering expectations of a new bid from the company to buy British rival AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN).

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) was also a stock to watch, after Toyota (NYSE:TM) said today it has sold some of its shares in the electric car maker, but would continue to study possible cooperation with the company in the future. Earlier this week, Daimler AG sold its 4% stake in Tesla for $780 million. Shares in Tesla edged down 0.8% Friday.

European markets settled lower today, with shares in Germany off the most as a result of the Ebola scare, and as investors were cautious ahead of results of European bank stress tests this weekend. As many as 25 banks are expected to fail the tests, according to a report in Bloomberg.

Shares in Asia mostly closed lower except in Japan, where the Nikkei closed up 1.01% to snap a losing streak.

In commodities, December gold rose $1 to $1,230 an ounce, while December crude on the NYMEX shed 82 cents to $81.27 a barrel in electronic trading.

10/24/2014 10:58 AM

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