Market Wrap for Friday, May 16: Stocks Rally Out Of Thursday's Valley

A late day rally led markets higher to recover some value lost during Thursday’s sell off.

Major Indexes

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose surged 44.5 points, or 0.27 percent to close at 16,491.

The S&P 500 added 7.01 points, or 0.37 percent to close at 1,878.

The Nasdaq rose 21.29 points, or 0.52 percent to close at 4,090.59.

The Russell 3000 climbed 10.34 points, or 1.04 percent to close at 1,001.2.

Top Stories

Darden DRI announced that it will be selling Red Lobster to Golden Gate Capital for $2.1 billion. This is a move that many shareholders have been urging the company to delay for further discussion. Shares reacted accordingly, falling more than four percent.

13Fs were released after the close Thursday and resulted in some interesting trading activity Friday. Platform Specialty Products PAH, for example, rose almost six percent Ackman announced a large stake in the company. Verizon Communications VZ rose more than two percent after Dan Loeb and Warren Buffett added positions in the company and David Tepper sold his stake.

Stock Movers

Rackspace Hosting RAX shares were up 18.22 percent into the close to $36.26 on confirmation of approach by potential buyers and partners.

Shares of Dillard's NYSE: DDS) were up as well, jumping almost 15 percent to $110.08 near the end of regular trading after the company beat on both top and bottom lines in its report following Thursday's close.

Nordstrom JWN shares gained more than 14 percent and crossed the $70 level as the company reported upbeat first-quarter results. Nordstrom posted a quarterly profit of $0.72 per share on revenue of $2.93 billion. However, analysts were expecting a profit of $0.68 per share on revenue of $2.86 billion. Analysts at Credit Suisse upgraded Nordstrom from Neutral to Outperform.

Shares of World Wrestling Entertainment WWE were down 43.28 percent into the close to $11.31 following announcement of NBCUniveral deal on Thursday. Benchmark downgraded WWE from Buy to Hold.

Vonage Holdings VG was down as well, dropping almost five percent to $3.53 despite seemingly little news into the end of trading.

Global markets

Asian markets were mostly weak led by a sell off in Japanese markets. The Shanghai index rose 0.08 percent with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 0.08 percent. Japan’s volatile Nikkei gave up 1.41 percent.

Europe was mostly flat on the week The Euro Stoxx index, which tracks 50 blue chips gained 0.3 percent, London’s FTSE picked up 0.22 percent, and France’s CAC rose 0.26 percent.

Commodities

As equity markets moved higher, energy futures also rose in value. At last check, brent oil was up 0.71 percent to $109.74. Oil rose in value four of five days this week.

Precious metals sold off slightly this week. Gold futures traded down 0.32 percent heading into the equity market close to $1,293.18. Silver futures lost 0.72 percent to fall to $19.38.

Currencies

The Powershares ETF UUP which tracks the value of the US dollar versus a basket of foreign currencies, rose a twentieth of a percent to close out a strong week. The ETF was last trading at $21.40.

The closely watched EUR/USD pair dropped 0.09 percent to $1.3698. Other big movers on the day include the GBP/USD, which rose 0.19 percent, and the USD/CHF which fell 0.24 percent.

Bonds

Treasuries added a little value today. The iShares ETF TLT which tracks the performance of 20 plus year government bonds was down 0.28 percent heading into the close. The ETF make a huge move to gain 2.07 percent this week.