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From Briefing.com: 4:10 pm : The major averages settled on their best levels of the session despite showing some early weakness. The S&P 500 rose 0.4% while the Nasdaq outperformed with an advance of 0.7%.

Stocks began the session in the red as cautious action in Europe contributed to the lower open. Although European indices hovered near their lows as the U.S. session got underway, they were quick to climb off their lows right alongside U.S. equities.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq paced the rebound as top-weighted index components like Google (GOOG 1032.47, +20.69), Microsoft (MSFT 38.16, +0.80), and Qualcomm (QCOM 70.03, +1.52) provided significant support. In addition, Cisco Systems (CSCO 24.00, +0.27) added 1.1% ahead of its after-hours quarterly report.

Momentum names also underpinned the Nasdaq after suffering group-wide weakness last week. Facebook (FB 48.71, +2.11), LinkedIn (LNKD 220.65, +11.37), and Priceline.com (PCLN 1124.20, +24.71) gained between 2.3% and 5.4%. Tesla (TSLA 138.70, +0.90) also displayed intraday strength, but surrendered the bulk of its gain into the close amid reports of fire department activity at the company's factory in California.

Outside of technology, the discretionary sector (+1.6%) was the only other outperformer among cyclical sectors. Apparel retailers climbed throughout the session after Macy's (M 50.68, +4.35) beat on earnings and revenue. Macy's jumped 9.4% while the broader SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT 87.31, +1.13) advanced 1.3%.

Homebuilders also provided a measure of support to discretionary shares as the iShares Dow Jones US Home Construction ETF (ITB 22.13, +0.30) settled higher by 1.4%.

Also of note, the financial sector ended in-line with the broader market despite underperforming in early action. The sector climbed into positive territory in conjunction with the S&P, and followed the benchmark index into the close.

With regard to countercyclical sectors, only consumer staples (+0.9%) finished ahead of the broader market while health care (+0.5%), telecom services (-0.2%), and utilities (+0.3%) lagged.

Treasuries finished near their highs with the 10-yr yield down four basis points at 2.74%.

Today's participation was on the light side as less than 700 million shares changed hands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The weekly MBA Mortgage Index fell 1.8% to follow last week's decline of 2.8%.

The Treasury Budget deficit fell to $91.6 billion in October from $120.0 billion in October 2012. Since the data are not seasonally adjusted, the October budget deficit cannot be compared to the surplus in September. The CBO, which typically releases its budget estimate a few days before the Treasury releases the actual numbers, did not release an advance projection for the October data. While the government shutdown likely had an effect on the decline in the October budget deficit, the Treasury Department did not issue a statement explaining what exactly the effects were.

Tomorrow, weekly initial claims, September trade balance, and preliminary Q3 productivity will all be reported at 8:30 ET. In addition, Janet Yellen's confirmation hearing will begin tomorrow with an appearance in front of the Senate Banking Committee.

Nasdaq +31.3% YTD
Russell 2000 +30.9% YTD
S&P 500 +25.0% YTD
DJIA +20.7% YTD

DJ30 +70.96 NASDAQ +45.66 SP500 +14.31 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1784/1.75 bln/769 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2059/696.6 mln/947

3:30 pm :

Dec crude oil traded higher today, advancing to a session high of $94.54 per barrel in afternoon pit action. It pulled back slightly heading into the close and settled with a 0.8% gain at $93.91 per barrel.
Dec natural gas touched a session high of $3.63 per MMBtu in morning floor trade but slipped back into negative territory. It settled 1.4% lower at $3.57 per MMBtu, just above its session low of $3.56 per MMBtu.
Dec gold fell for a fifth consecutive session despite trading in the black for most of today's pit trade. The yellow metal rose to a session high of $1279.80 per ounce in morning action but gave up the gain as it slipped into the red in the last half hour of floor trade. It settled with a 0.2% loss at $1268.50 per ounce, just above its session low of $1267.70 per ounce.
Dec silver brushed a session high of $20.80 per ounce in early morning action but quickly fell into negative territory. It trended lower as the session progressed and settled 1.5% lower at $20.45 per ounce.

5:01PM Teradyne announces CEO succession: Mark E. Jagiela to succeed Michael A. Bradley as CEO effective January 31, 2014 (TER) 17.31 +0.13 : Co's Board of Directors today named Mark E. Jagiela to succeed Michael A. Bradley as CEO effective January 31, 2014. Mr. Jagiela will join the Board of Directors on the same date. Mr. Jagiela is currently the Company's President and a 31-year veteran of Teradyne.

4:12PM Cisco Systems beats by $0.02, misses on revs; Gross margin below mid-point of guidance; co announced $15 bln stock repurchase program; will guide for Q2 on CC at 16:30 (CSCO) 23.99 +0.27 : Reports Q1 (Oct) earnings of $0.53 per share, $0.02 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.51; revenues rose 1.8% year/year to $12.09 bln vs the $12.35 bln consensus.

Q1 Gross Margin reported at ~61.3% versus guidance of 61-62%. Cash flows from operations were $2.6 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2014, compared with $4.0 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, and compared with $2.5 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2013.

The company announces $15 billion increase in stock repurchase program

"We are committed to our capital allocation strategy as we demonstrated today with the $15 billion increase in the authorization of our stock repurchase program...This quarter we delivered record non-GAAP profitability and continued our steady stream of innovation and market leadership...While our revenue growth was below our expectation, our financials are strong, our strategy is strong and our innovation engine is executing extremely well. We remain confident in our long-term goal to be the #1 IT company in the world and help our customers solve their biggest business problems."

Co will guide for Q2 on the call with consensus calling for non-GAAP EPS of $0.52 on revs of $12.6 bln


3:03PM Riverbed Technology announces new version 9.5 of its Stingray application delivery controller for Amazon Web Services (AMZN) GovCloud (RVBD) 17.38 -0.20 : Co announced the availability of Riverbed Stingray 9.5 traffic manager software on Amazon Web Services (AMZN) GovCloud. AWS GovCloud is a specific, isolated region of the AWS cloud that is designed to allow U.S. government agencies, contractors and customers to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. Riverbed provides hundreds of government organizations around the world with solutions to meet their most demanding IT goals. Now, with the availability of Stingray on AWS GovCloud, U.S. federal agencies can optimize, scale, secure and improve the performance of their mission-critical applications in the cloud.

Large Cap Gainers

M (50.73 +9.50%): Beat quarterly EPS by $0.08 ($0.47 vs $0.39 estimate), revs rose 3.3% yoy to $6.28 bln vs $6.19 bln estimate; Q3 comparable store sales +3.5% vs +2% estimates; reaffirmed FY14 EPS of $3.80-3.90 vs $3.80 estimate, comps +2.0-2.9%
PXD (193.35 +5.80%): Announced that the University 7-43 10H, its first horizontal Wolfcamp D interval well in Andrews County, had a 24-hour peak initial production rate of 3,605 barrels oil equivalent per day, with an oil content of 74%
PBR (16.4 +2.24%): Sold Peru assets to PetroChina for ~$2.6 bln

Large Cap Losers

REGN (277.05 -3.43%): Reuters reporting that new U.S guidelines on heart health favor statins for the lowernig of cholesterol; Regeneron is developing a different type of cholesterol drug - a PCSK9 inhibitor
NUE (52.1 -3.12%): Downgraded to Equal-Weight from Overweight at Morgan Stanley
MT (16.49 -2.25%): Downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at Exane BNP Paribas

Mid Cap Gainers

SINA (85.77 +12.99%): Beat quarterly EPS by $0.10 ($0.42 ex items vs $0.32 estimate), revs rose 21.8% yoy to $179.94 mln vs $178.2 mln estimate; sees Q4 revs of $190-194 mln vs $183.62 mln estimate; upgraded to Outperform at Credit Suisse
QIHU (87.08 +6.96%): Trading higher following strong quarterly results from peer SINA
HMA (13.26 +5.79%): Reported Q3 EPS of -$0.01 per share, revs rose 0.8% yoy to $1.68 bln vs $1.7 bln estimate; Board recommended shareholders vote for proposed merger with Community Health Systems (CYH); Glenview Capital, 14.5% owner of HMA, confirmed intention to vote for CYH proposal

Mid Cap Losers

FI (25.72 -12.87%): Hearing downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Credit Suisse
MWE (70.98 -5.80%): Reported Q3 EPS of -$0.17, revs rose 49.9% yoy to $420.52 mln vs $453.47 mln estimate
LFL (16.11 -3.48%): Reported prelimiarly monthly traffic statistics for October 2013: system passenger traffic increased 3.1% as capacity decreased 2.1%

Mainframe2 announced its support of new NVIDIA (NVDA) GRIDbased cloud instances at Amazon Web Services' (AMZN) annual re:Invent conference.

9:15AM Juniper Networks names Shaygan Kheradpir CEO (JNPR) 19.60 : Co announced Shaygan Kheradpir as its CEO, effective January 1, 2014. Kheradpir succeeds Kevin Johnson, who in July announced his plan to retire as CEO. Johnson will remain as a member of the board.

O2Micro International (OIIM) announced the patent grant for its Battery Module Identification methodology.

Lantronix (LTRX) has collaborated with Freescale Semiconductor (FSL) to demonstrate a new evaluation board for its xPico Wi-Fi OEM module, designed specifically for the Freescale Tower System.

AMD (AMD) launched the AMD Radeon R9 270 graphics card, the newest addition to the AMD Radeon R9 Series GPUs.

Atmel (ATML) has further expanded its low-power 8-bit tinyAVR family with the ATtiny441 and ATtiny841

7:09AM Tessera Tech and ChipMOS (IMOS) settle litigation; in exchange for being released from the litigation, ChipMOS will make a payment to Tessera (TSRA) 18.20 : TSRA announced its Tessera subsidiary has reached a settlement with ChipMOS Technologies and ChipMOS U.S.A. In exchange for being released from the litigation, ChipMOS will make a payment to TSRA. The companies have not disclosed the full terms and conditions of the settlement agreement. Tessera agreed to dismiss its claims against ChipMOS relating to Tessera's patent infringement action pending in the United States District Court, Northern District of California.

6:58AM Verizon Digital Media Services acquired upLynk for expanded video streaming capabilities; financial terms not disclosed (VZ) 50.16 : Verizon Digital Media Services has acquired upLynk, a technology and television cloud company. The exclusive technology of upLynk simplifies the complex issues content owners face by streamlining the process of uploading and encoding TV Everywhere for live, linear and video on-demand content. By using a single adaptive video format across all devices, upLynk simplifies encoding, storage, playback, ad insertion and analytics to eliminate complexity and enable more agile video workflows.