Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Open Higher; Berkshire Hathaway To Acquire Phillips 66 Flow Business For About $1.4B - Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Common Stock (NYSE:BRK/A)

Following the market opening Tuesday, the Dow traded up 0.19 percent to 16,536.33 while the NASDAQ surged 0.27 percent to 4,165.45. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.22 percent to 1,845.07.

Top Headline
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) announced its plans to buy the flow improver business of Phillips 66 PSX for about $1.4 billion of stock.

Equities Trading UP

Shares of Hertz Global Holdings

HTZ

got a boost, shooting up 4.94 percent to $27.19 after the company

adopted one-year

shareholder rights plan.

Phillips 66 PSX shot up 1.38 percent to $75.75 after Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) announced its plans to buy the flow improver business of Phillips 66 for about $1.4 billion of stock.

Marvell Technology Group

MRVL

was also up, gaining 5.10 percent to $14.46 after KKR & Co LLP reported a 6.8% stake in the company.

Equities Trading DOWN
Shares of Silver Standard Resources SSRI were down 1.78 percent to 6.64. Silver futures tumbled 3.29% to trade at $18.97 an ounce.

Haemonetics

HAE

tumbled 1.22 percent to $42.02 after analysts at Benchmark downgraded the stock from Buy to Hold and lowered the target price from $49 to $46.

Hewlett-Packard Company HPQ was down, falling 0.39 percent to $27.96 after the company announced its plans to cut 34,000 jobs by the end of 2014.

Commodities

In commodity news,

oil traded down 0.73 percent

to $98.57, while gold traded up 0.61 percent to $1,211.20.

Silver traded up 0.20 percent Tuesday to $19.66, while copper rose 0.03 percent to $3.38.

Eurozone

European shares

were higher

today. The Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.15 percent, the French CAC 40 rose 0.47 percent and U.K. shares gained 0.26 percent.

Economics
The ICSC-Goldman Sachs store sales index rose 1% in the week ended Saturday versus the earlier week.

The Johnson Redbook Retail Sales Index gained 4.5% in the fourth week of December, versus a 3.9% rise in the earlier week.

The S&P/Case-Shiller home price index gained 13.6% in the year ended October. The Chicago PMI fell to 59.10 in December, versus a prior reading of 63.00. However, economists were expecting a reading of 61.00.

The Conference Board's consumer confidence index surged to 78.10 in December, versus a prior reading of 70.40. However, economists were expecting a reading of 76.00.

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