On The Fly: Top stock stories for Friday

Stocks opened with modest losses and remained in negative territory throughout the session. The markets took their cue from overseas markets which were lost ground in their session. The averages managed to pare their opening losses during the opening hour and then proceeded to move in a narrow range for the rest of the day. The Dow's winning streak of 10 straight sessions was stopped but the losses were small. Oil lost ground as the commodity fell roughly 0.7% while gold prices rallied roughly 0.5% for the day. ECONOMIC EVENTS: In the U.S., new home sales bounced 3.7% to a 555,000 unit rate in January, below forecast. Consumer confidence fell to 96.3 in the final read from the University of Michigan survey after the index hit 98.5 in January. Baker Hughes said the U.S. Rig Count was up 3 rigs from last week to 754, with oil rigs up 5 to 602, gas rigs down 2 to 151, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 1. COMPANY NEWS: Shares of HP Enterprise (HPE) dropped 6.86% after the company reported better than expected fourth quarter earnings but worse than expected sales, citing soft demand for servers and storage hardware. The information technology solutions vendor also lowered its full-year outlook, prompting some downgrades from Wall Street analysts... Also lower after earnings is J.C. Penney (JCP), which slipped 5.83% after the retailer reported quarterly revenue and same-store sales that fell short of expectations. The company also announced plans to close up to 140 stores over the next few months. Separately, higher-end peer Nordstrom (JWN) jumped 5.74% after its earnings per share topped expectations and said the impact of a recent critical tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump was "negligible." MAJOR MOVERS: Among the notable gainers was Foot Locker (FL), which advanced 9.38% after the athletic store's earnings for the quarter topped expectations. Also higher was RH (RH), which rose 24.46% following better than expected quarterly earnings per share and revenue. Among the noteworthy losers was Acacia Communications (ACIA), which slid 14.8% after the networking company gave disappointing guidance. Also lower was B&G Foods (BGS), which slipped 6.93% after the company missed Street estimates. INDEXES: The Dow rose 11.44, or 0.05%, to 20,821.76, the Nasdaq gained 9.80, or 0.17%, to 5,845.31, and the S&P 500 increased 3.53, or 0.15%, to 2,367.34.