Stocks Hold On After Opening Hour Rally – Acadiana Business Index

The major averages finished higher in the session, albeit off their best levels. Ken Meyers has your stock market report on the Acadiana Business Index.

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• The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 22 points to close at 13,118 after being up by as many as 91 points in earlier action. The S&P 500 advanced 3 points to 1394 and the NASDAQ gained 22 points to end at 2990.
• Stocks rallied in the opening hours of trading on positive U.S. profit tallies and hopes that the European Central Bank was close to lowering the region’s borrowing costs.
• Nine of the 10 sectors on the S&P finished in the green, led by a rally in material stocks.
• Shares of Alcoa gained 13 cents to $8.50 and Du Pont added 69 cents to $50.16 per share. Looking at earnings, Shares of Cognizant Technologies finished $6.35 higher at $64.21 after the company posted a better-than-expected quarterly report and boosted their full year earnings forecast.
• In other news, Best Buy jumped $2.35 to $19.99 after its founder and former chairman offered to acquire the remaining shares of the company for $24 to $26 per share.
• Composite volume on the NYSE was just under 3.1 billion shares with advancing issues besting decliners by a margin of 5-3. The NASDAQ was 5-3 positive on issues as well.
• Turning to fixed income, Treasuries are little changed along the curve. The benchmark 10-year note was up 3/32 to yield 1.56% and the 30-year bond lower by 1/32 to yield 2.65%

For the complete report, Ken’s Market Report.