Stocks opened mixed as voters headed to the polls for the midterm elections. The averages drifted higher in the early going, pulling the Nasdaq into the green to join the Dow and S&P, after which the indexes generally drifted for the rest of the session on thin volume as investors await to see if either the House or Senate get flipped from their current Republican majorities.
ECONOMIC EVENTS: In the U.S., the JOLTS report showed job openings fell 284,000 to 7.009M in September.
COMPANY NEWS: Shares of Booking Holdings (BKNG) rose 4% after the owner of Priceline and other online travel sites reported Q3 bookings and room night growth that topped Street forecasts.
Generic drugmaker Mylan (MYL) surged 16% after various Wall Street analysts called its Q3 report last night "better than feared," "comforting" and "encouraging."
Under Armour (UAA) shares slid 3% following a report in The Wall Street Journal that revealed a practice that had allowed employees to charge strip club visits to their corporate cards. In response to questions from The Journal about Under Armour's culture, Chairman and CEO Kevin Plank said: "Our teammates deserve to work in a respectful and empowering environment...We can and will do better."
Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) shares finished 4% higher after the company and Amazon Web Services (AMZN) announced the immediate availability of the first AMD EPYC processor-based instances on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.
MAJOR MOVERS: Among the noteworthy gainers was Symantec (SYMC), which jumped 12.5% after Reuters reported that PE firm Thoma Bravo has approached the company to express interest in a potential takeover. Also higher were Gogo (GOGO) and e.l.f. Beauty (ELF), which gained a respective 26% and 19% after reporting quarterly results.
Among the notable losers was GreenSky (GSKY), which dropped 37% after the company's third quarter revenue came in below expectations and management reduced its fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019 EBITDA outlook. Also lower after reporting quarterly results were Univar (UNVR) and Tenet (THC), which fell 14% and 9%, respectively.
INDEXES: The Dow rose 173.31, or 0.68%, to 25,635.01, the Nasdaq gained 47.11, or 0.64%, to 7,375.96, and the S&P 500 advanced 17.14, or 0.63%, to 2,755.45 .
Booking Holdings
+68.1 (+3.62%)
Symbol now VTRS
+5.08 (+16.20%)
Under Armour
-0.69 (-2.88%)
AMD
+0.77 (+3.87%)
Amazon.com
+16.07 (+0.99%)
SYMC
+
Gogo
+1.47 (+25.26%)
e.l.f. Beauty
+2.125 (+19.14%)
GreenSky
-5.375 (-36.56%)
Univar
-3.6 (-13.91%)
Tenet Healthcare
-2.59 (-9.52%)
Under Armour
-0.57 (-2.65%)