Equity Indeces Reverse Losses; Crude Oil Falls Hard

Heading into the final hour before the close Friday, the Dow reversed losses and is trading up 0.12 percent to 16,934.83 while the NASDAQ gained 0.43 percent to 4,415.18. The S&P also reversed losses to trade up 0.12 percent to 1,966.96.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Telecommunications services shares gained around 0.25 percent in today’s trading. Top gainers in the sector included NQ Mobile NQ, Allot Communications ALLT, and SK Telecom Co SKM.

In trading on Friday, energy shares were relative laggards, down on the day by about 0.40 percent. Top losers in the sector included Callon Petroleum Company CPE, down 5.67 percent, and Tesco TESO, off 3.99 percent.

Top Headline

Wells Fargo & Co WFC reported a gain in its second-quarter profit.

Wells Fargo’s quarterly profit surged to $5.7 billion, or $1.01 per share, from a year-ago profit of $5.5 billion, or $0.98 per share.

Its revenue declined 3.4% to $21.1 billion from $21.4 billion. However, analysts were expecting a profit of $1.01 per share on revenue of $20.84 billion.

Equities Trading UP

ChannelAdvisor ECOM shares shot up 4.40 percent to $24.18. Deutsche Bank upgraded Channel Advisor from Hold to Buy. ChannelAdvisor is expected to release its Q2 financial results on August 4, 2014.

Shares of Lorillard LO got a boost, shooting up 4.31 percent to $65.81. Lorillard confirmed that Lorillard and Reynolds American RAI are engaged in discussions regarding RAI's potential acquisition of Lorillard. Cowen & Company initiated coverage on Lorillard with a Underperform rating.

Amazon.com AMZN shares were also up, gaining 5.27 percent to $345.21. Amazon.com’s June same-store sales grew 34 percent, according to the e-commerce market research shop ChannelAdvisor.

Equities Trading DOWN

Shares of Kofax KFX were down 10.89 percent to $7.20 after the company reported selected preliminary unaudited results for FY14. Kofax expected FY14 sales of $295.0 million to $298.0 million.

Rent-A-Center RCII shares tumbled 11.08 percent to $25.83 after the company issued a downbeat guidance for the second quarter. The company expected adjusted earnings of $0.36 to $0.38 per share on revenue of around $773 million.

MGIC Investment MTG was down, falling 10.82 percent to $8.24 following the FHFA proposal. The company released monthly operating statistics for June.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 2.40 percent to $100.46, while gold traded down 0.13 percent to $1,337.50.

Silver traded down 0.20 percent Friday to $21.47, while copper gained 0.08 percent to $3.27.

Eurozone

European shares were mostly higher today.

The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.14 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index surged 0.05 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index climbed 0.62 percent.

Meanwhile, the German DAX rose 0.07 percent and the French CAC 40 climbed 0.35 percent while UK shares gained 0.07 percent.

Economics

The U.S. Treasury monthly budget report for June was released at 2:00 p.m. ET and showed Total Receipts were $324.0B with Total Outlays at $253.0B and a Surplus of $71.0B. Full Report Link here: http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0614.pdf