Early weekend affects Wall Street

At midday on Thursday, Wall Street was slightly lower amid a week of numerous releases of economic data. The declines, of just 0.1 percent for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500, were attributed to investor hesitation ahead of employment figures to be released on Friday as well as to many early departures for the summer-ending Labor Day holiday this weekend. The Dow was 2.87 points lower to 11,374.10, while the Nasdaq had fallen by 2.87 points to 2,182.86 and the S&P was down 1.21 points to 1,303.06.

Miners were up on the news that Glamis Gold will be purchased by Goldcorp of Canada for $8.6 billion in stock. Glamis added 19 percent to $46.25. Elsewhere in the sector, Freeport McMoran was 2.1 percent higher to $58.29, while Barrick Gold gained 2.6 percent to $33.65. Related to the sector, mining equipment maker Joy Global was up 15.7 percent to $41.47 on a five-fold increase in earnings in its fiscal third quarter.

In the retail sector, Nordstrom added 4.5 percent to $36.88 on a 7 percent increase in August same-store sales. Meanwhile, discount retailer Family Dollar advanced by 5 percent to $25.44 on an increased earnings prediction for the fourth quarter.

Ebay fell 3.3 percent to $27.03 on the news that a privacy watchdog in the UK is looking at allegations that the online auctioneer has given user details to third parties and prevented users from deleting their accounts.

In the telecommunications sector, equipment maker JDS Uniphase dropped 13.7 percent to $2.27 on the announcement that its fiscal first-quarter revenues will not reach analyst predictions.

Discuss this in the Finance Markets forums

Story link: Early weekend affects Wall Street