Heading into the closing bell on Thursday, the U.S. stock
market traded lower. The Nasdaq, in particular, was hit after
Google's (NASDAQ:
GOOG
) third-quarter earnings were mistakenly released in the middle
of the trading day. The stock plunged 9 percent before being
halted. The company said that its financial printer was to blame
for the early release.
"Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer,
informed us that they had filed our draft 8K earnings statement
without authorization. We have ceased trading on NASDAQ while we
work to finalize the document. Once it's finalized we will
release our earnings, resume trading on NASDAQ and hold our
earnings call as normal at 1:30 PM PT," the company said.
A spokesman for RR Donnelley said: "We are fully engaged in an
investigation to determine how this event took place and are
pursuing our first obligation - which is to serve our valued
customer."
Heading into the close, Google had recouped some of its losses
and was trading down around 7.50 percent to $698.59. The losses
in Google shares have weighed on the entire Nasdaq, which was
last down around 0.91 percent. This compared to a loss of 0.23
percent for the S&P 500 and a decline of 0.17 percent, or 23
points, in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Other notable stocks that moved on earnings news include
American Express (NYSE:
AXP
), eBay (NASDAQ:
EBAY
), Verizon (NYSE:
VZ
), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:
MS
). American Express had lost a little more than 3 percent, while
Morgan Stanley was down 4 percent. Verizon shares were trading
around 2.50 percent higher and eBay had gained more than 5
percent.
Crude oil was lower on the day. At last check, NYMEX crude
futures had lost 0.23 percent to $91.91 and Brent contracts were
lower by 0.82 percent to $112.29. The United States Oil Fund ETF
(NYSE:
USO
) was trading near the flat line at $34.12.
Gold futures were last trading down around 0.65 percent to
$1,741.60 and silver had lost 1.50 percent to $32.73. The heavily
traded SPDR Gold Trust ETF (NYSE:
GLD
) was last down 0.37 percent to $168.91.
Treasuries also were moving lower heading into the close of
the equity market. The iShares Barclays 20+ Year Bond ETF (NYSE:
TLT
) had lost 0.66 percent to $120.01. The yield on the 10-Year Note
was up by 1.3 basis points to 1.83 percent.
The U.S. dollar was higher on the session. The PowerShares DB
US Dollar Index Bullish ETF (NYSE:
UUP
), which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket
of foreign currencies, had added 0.46 percent to $21.74. The
closely watched EUR/USD pair was last trading at $1.3065, a
decline of 0.34 percent.
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