From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm Closing Market Summary: Averages Slip Into the Close, End Little Changed (:WRAPX) :The stock market held a modest gain throughout the majority of Thursday's session, but increased selling pressure in the final hour of action dragged the major averages from their best marks of the day. The S&P 500 traded as high as +0.3%, but finished with a loss of 0.1%. The Dow (-0.1%) also finished with slim loss while the Nasdaq (unch) settled just a tick above its unchanged mark.
Equities opened Thursday's session slightly lower, but ticked up into positive territory after the Senate released its version of the healthcare reform bill. The Senate's version would roll back the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion more gradually than the version that the House passed last month, but the cuts to Medicaid would be larger in total under the Senate's bill. However, in general, the two versions of the bill are very similar.
Lawmakers were hoping to vote on the bill before the July 4th recess, but Senate Republicans currently do not have enough votes to pass the piece of legislation. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) confirmed that they oppose the bill as it does not fully repeal the Affordable Care Act.
The health care sector (+1.1%) was strong from start to finish on Thursday, settling at the top of the day's leaderboard by a comfortable margin. Nearly all of the sector's components finished in positive territory, but the biotechnology industry exhibited particular strength, advancing the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB 320.11, +4.01) higher by 1.3%. Today's win marks the fourth in a row for the IBB, which now trades higher by 9.4% for the week.
As for the remaining advancers, gains were relatively modest with no group adding more than 0.2%. The top-weighted technology sector (+0.1%) managed to settled a step ahead of the broader market, but its components were pretty evenly mixed between green and red. Oracle (ORCL 50.30, +3.97) was the sector's top-performer, jumping 8.6%, after the company beat top and bottom line estimates and issued upbeat guidance.
Crude oil managed to break its three-day losing streak with WTI crude finishing higher by 0.5% at $42.74/bbl. However, the commodity drifted from its session high in the afternoon, eventually settling in the middle of the day's trading range. The energy sector (-0.1%) also slipped in the afternoon, retracing all of the modest gain it held throughout the morning.
The heavily-weighted financial sector (-0.6%) was weak throughout Thursday's session and eventually finished in negative territory for the third day in a row. The consumer staples (-0.7%) and utilities (-0.4%) groups also closed notably lower while the remaining laggards--consumer discretionary, industrials, and telecom services--finished with losses of no more than 0.2%.
U.S. Treasuries settled modestly higher across the curve with the benchmark 10-yr yield slipping one basis point to 2.15%. The U.S. Dollar Index (97.25, +0.03) ended the day little changed.
Investor participation was below average as fewer than 900 million shares changed hands at the NYSE floor (50-day simple moving average: 1.0 billion).
Reviewing today's economic data, which included Initial Claims, May Leading Indicators, and the April FHFA Housing Price Index:
The latest weekly initial jobless claims count totaled 241,000 while the Briefing.com consensus expected a reading of 240,000. Today's tally was above the revised prior week count of 238,000 (from 237,000). As for continuing claims, they rose to 1.944 million from the revised count of 1.936 million (from 1.935 million).
The key takeaway from this report is that it will feed expectations for another decent-sized gain in nonfarm payrolls since it encompassed the week in which the survey for the June employment report was conducted.
The Conference Board's Leading Indicators report for May increased 0.3% (Briefing.com consensus 0.3%) after moving higher by a revised 0.2% in April (from 0.3%).
The key takeaway from the report is that strengths among the leading indicators have remained more widespread than weaknesses.
The FHFA Housing Price Index for April increased 0.7%, which followed a revised uptick of 0.7% (from 0.6%) in March.Friday's lone economic report--May New Home Sales (Briefing.com consensus 599,000)--will cross the wires at 10:00 ET.
Nasdaq Composite +15.9% YTD
S&P 500 +8.7% YTD
Dow Jones Industrial Average +8.3% YTD
Russell 2000 +3.5% YTD
Tech Stocks from Briefing.com
The broader market finished on a low note today despite mostly favorable trading action during the majority of the session. The lone gainer today was the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite; the index added 2.73 points (+0.04%) to 6236.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 12.74 points (-0.06%) to 21397.29, and the S&P 500 declined 1.11 (-0.05%) to 2434.50.
The Technology (XLK 55.95, +0.02 +0.04%) space sold off modestly into the close but held the flat line to end slightly higher. Component Oracle (ORCL 50.30, +3.97 +8.57%) was the best performer in the space today following better than expected earnings and guidance. The Healthcare XLV +1.04% space finished with the best gains today following the release of the Senate Healthcare Bill; other sectors finished as follows: IYZ +0.12%, XLB +0.11%, XLRE +0.06%, XLE -0.06%, XLI -0.21%, XLY -0.23%, XLU -0.47%, XLF -0.62%, XLP -0.66%.
In the S&P 500 Information Technology (961.75, +0.45 +0.05%) space, trading began the session with modest pressure, but climbed out of the red and held small gains into the bell. Component Accenture (ACN 122.08, -5.03 -3.96%) was the worst performer in the space today after its in-line earnings and guidance. Other names in the space which finished higher today included FSLR +3.20%, ADI +1.68%, AKAM +1.50%, MSI +1.30%, NTAP +1.30%, CRM +1.04%, ADSK +1.03%, GPN +0.97%.
Other notable news items among sector components:
Snap (SNAP 17.61, +0.34 +1.97%) said to have paid $250-350 million to acquire Zenly ahead of launching Snap Map, according to Tech Crunch.
China Unicom (CHU 14.89, +0.23 +1.57%) looking to raise roughly $10 billion with help from Alibaba (BABA 142.28, -1.01 -0.70%) & Tencent (TCEHY 36.33, +0.38 +1.06%), according to Reuters.
YuMe (YUME 4.93, +0.26 +5.57%) declared special dividend of $1.00 per share and quarterly dividend of $0.03 per share; Reaffirmed previous EBITDA guidance.
Wipro (WIT 5.06, +0.07 +1.50%) announced collaboration with Red Hat (RHT 98.89, +0.31 +0.31%) 'to offer developers and IT teams a repeatable and rapid methodology for application modernization across public, private, and hybrid clouds'.
Weibo (WB 72.25, -4.71 -6.12%) confirmed public notice issued by The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People's Republic of China.
CACI Intl (CACI 125.90, +5.05 +4.18%) reaffirmed FY17 guidance and issued FY18 guidance with in-line sales.
Mitek Systems (MITK 8.75, flat) named Jeff Davison as Chief Financial Officer effective June 21.
STMicroelectronics (STM 14.99, -0.36 -2.35%) announced a $1.5 billion dual-tranche offering of New Convertible Bonds, the early redemption of its 2019 Convertible Bonds, the launch of a share buy-back program.
In reaction to quarterly results:
Oracle (ORCL) reported better than expected Q4 EPS and revenues of $0.89 and $10.94 billion, respectively. For Q1, the company sees EPS in constant currency of $0.59-0.61 on total revenue growth of 4-6%. For FY18, the company sees EPS growth of double digits.
Accenture (ACN) reported in-line Q3 EPS and revenues of $1.52 and $8.87 billion. For Q4, the company sees in-line revenues of $8.85-9.10 billion.
Methode Electronics (MEI 40.10, +1.45 +3.75%) reported worse than expected Q4 EPS of $0.62 on better than expected revenues of $219.7 million. For FY18, the company sees EPS below market expectations at $2.43-2.63 on in-line revenues of $807-827 million.
Analyst actions:
ORCL was upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Wedbush,
INFN was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at B. Riley & Co.,
SPLK was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Guggenheim,
VNTV was upgraded to Outperform from Mkt Perform at Keefe Bruyette;
EFII was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Longbow,
CLS was downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Macquarie,
TSM and TEO were downgraded to Hold from Buy at HSBC;
MSFT was initiated with a Buy at Cleveland Research,
IBM was initiated with a Neutral at Cleveland Research
