Stocks opened in positive territory as the Dow and S&P both established new all-time highs. Today marked "quadruple witching," when options and futures on indexes and stocks all expire on the same day, which generally leads to volatility, especially late in the trading session during which it occurs. This is compounded today by index rebalancing as the S&P moves some internet and media stocks into a new group called "communication services." The sector rebalancing, which will occur at the close today, could add to typical volume and volatility. ECONOMIC EVENTS: In the U.S., Markit's manufacturing index rose 0.9 ticks to 55.6 in the preliminary print for September. However, the services index dropped 1.9 points to 52.9. In Europe, the services PMI was a touch ahead of expectations while the manufacturing PMI fell short of the consensus forecast. In Asia, Japan's manufacturing flash PMI ticked up month-over-month. Baker Hughes reported that the U.S. rig count is down 2 rigs from last week to 1,053. COMPANY NEWS: Shares of Micron (MU) fell about 3% despite the company reporting better than expected fourth quarter results last night. The memory chip maker, however, provided guidance for the first quarter that Nomura Instinet analyst Romit Shah said is likely to be perceived as optimistic in light of the current environment "where competitors are seemingly planning for a protracted downturn." As such, the analyst expects the stock to remain volatile pending a moderation in the rate of price declines... In M&A news, Adobe (ADBE) announced last night that it has agreed to acquire cloud platform Marketo for $4.75B. Additionally, Medtronic (MDT) announced last night that it agreed to acquire all outstanding ordinary shares of Mazor Robotics (MZOR) for $58.50 per American Depository share for a total of roughly $1.64B, or $1.34B net of Medtronic's existing stake in Mazor and cash acquired. Mazor Robotics shares trading in New York rose 10% after the deal announcement... Shares of Texas Instruments (TXN) added 1% after the company said it will raise its quarterly cash dividend by 24% to 77c per share and also authorized the repurchase of an additional $12B of its common stock over time. MAJOR MOVERS: Among the noteworthy gainers was ADT (ADT), which rose 5% after the company yesterday announced a strategic initiative with Amazon (AMZN) to support integration of Amazon's new Alexa Guard feature with the ADT Pulse security system. Also higher was Steelcase (SCS), which gained 18% after reporting quarterly results. Among the notable losers was New Age Beverages (NBEV), which fell 22% after the stock was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Maxim. Also lower was United Natural Foods (UNFI), which fell 8.5% after reporting quarterly results. INDEXES: The Dow added 86.52, or 0.32%, to 26,743.50, the Nasdaq declined 41.28, or 0.51%, to 7,986.96, and the S&P 500 slipped 1.08, or 0.04%, to 2,929.67.
