End-of-Day Market Summary for November 18, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' summary for Friday, November 18, 2011, covering headlines from Friday's trading session. Today at market close, the Dow Jones Index traded up about 25.65 points or 0.22%, the S&P 500 traded 0.04% lower, the Nasdaq Composite Index traded down 0.6%, and the U.S. dollar trades slightly lower near the $78.25 level. Earlier today, Credit Suisse upgraded Smithfield Foods

to Outperform and Sterne Agee upgraded HP

to Buy. View all of

. Morgan Stanley downgraded Darden Restaurants

to Equal-Weight and Bank of America downgraded TransDigm

to Neutral. View all of

. Overseas, European markets ended their trading session lower. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 1.11%, Germany's DAX decreased by 0.85% and France's CAC 40 slid by 0.44% on the session. Asian stocks ended their session lower, as well. China's Shanghai Index lost 1.92%, Japan's Nikkei 225 increased by 1.23%, and the Hang Seng index slid by 1.73%. On the economic calendar, Leading Indicators came in at 0.9% versus an estimate of 0.6%. On the commodity front,

and

futures traded lower today, with gold trading about 0.1% lower today. Energy futures are lower as well, with

down over 1.1% near the $97.85 level and

futures are trading lower by about 0.9%.

futures are lower by about 2.9% and

futures are trading over 0.2% higher. On the earnings front this afternoon, Pepsico

reported Q3 EPS of $1.31 on revenues of $17.6 billion. The Street was looking for $1.30 per share on revenues of $17.2 billion. In corporate news, Abbot Labs

announced that

, making it the first drug to diagnose the disease. Clearwire

announced that

. Earlier today, the company announced that it was mulling paying some of its debt payments, promptly sending the stock downwards by about 24%. American Apparel

announced that

. This concludes your news summary for November 18, 2011.