Yahoo Finance Stocks Little Changed After Data
U.S. Market
Stocks were little changed this morning as investors considered economic data.
The consumer price index fell 0.7% in January from December levels. The CPI was off 0.1% year-over-year, the first annual decline in five years. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, CPI was up 0.2% from the previous month. Economists had expected an overall decline of 0.6% and had estimated that core CPI would rise 0.1%.
Initial unemployment claims rose a larger-than-expected 31,000 to 313,000 last week. The less volatile four-week moving average was up 11,500 to 294,500, a level consistent with further job growth.
Durable goods orders were up 2.8% in January from the previous month, well above the 0.6% increase expected by economists. Civilian aircraft orders were the big driver of the increase. Excluding transportation, orders were up only 0.3%.
At midday the Dow and S&P 500 were each down 0.1% while the Nasdaq was up 0.3%.
Stocks on the Move
Anheuser-Busch Inbev (BUD) reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2014 results that were in line with our expectations for a modest rebound following a weak third quarter.Consolidated revenue growth reaccelerated in the fourth quarter to 7.6%, up from 2.3% in the third quarter and 5.3% in the first nine months of the year, boosted by improving price/mix AB InBev's two largest markets. Shares were up over 2% at midday.
Salesforce.com (CRM) announced solid quarterly results for its fiscal fourth quarter of 2015 late Wednesday that were mostly in line with our revenue forecast, although expenses came in a bit above our model. Overall revenues grew to $1.4 billion, representing 29% growth versus 2014 on a constant currency basis. Marketing and sales as a percentage of revenue remains high at 51%, although, this particular ratio is inflated when growth is extremely high, given the ratable nature of the revenue for cloud application companies. Shares soared over 11% on the report.
Foreign Markets
European markets were higher today. In late trading, the FTSE 100, the Paris CAC and Germany’s DAX were up 0.2%, 0.6% and 1% respectively.
Asian shares were also higher on the day. The Shanghai Composite jumped 2.2%, the Nikkei 225 as up 1.1% while the Hang Seng rose 0.5%.
