Stocks Advance on Wall Street on Earnings, Cyprus Worries Linger

Nichole Harper
22 Mar, 2013
New York City

Market indexes shrugged off rising tensions in the euro zone. The dollar gained against the euro zone. Better than expected results from Tiffany, Nike and Darden Restaurants lifted market sentiment. Markets in Asia fell but in Europe erased early losses.

[R]11:00 AM New York – Market indexes shrugged off rising tensions in the euro zone. The dollar gained against the euro zone. Better than expected results from Tiffany, Nike and Darden Restaurants lifted market sentiment. Markets in Asia fell but in Europe erased early losses.[/R]

Stocks in New York opened higher on the latest positive earnings report from retailers and the dollar gained against the euro.

Investors shrugged off the ongoing saga in the euro zone after the European Central Bank set a deadline on Monday to withdraw emergency bank lending measures if lawmakers fail to agree on bailout conditions.

Finance minister of Cyprus also confirmed that Russia rebuffed its request for emergency financing.

Market indexes staged early morning rise after a sharp fall in previous session.

The S&P 500 index increased 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.47% after first thirty minutes of trading.

In European markets, FTSE 100 index in London gained 0.3% and the DAX index in Frankfurt trading eased 0.1%. In Paris, CAC 40 index decreased 0.1%.

European markets shrugged off growing tensions with Cyprus and rising prospects of the island nation leaving the currency zone.

Separately, German business confidence unexpectedly declined from a 10-month high on the worries that Cyprus tensions may spillover to other regions in the currency zone.

Europe’s largest car maker Volkswagen AG made an initial offer to acquire remaining 25% stake in the truck maker MAN SE at 7% discount to the closing price on Thursday. VW offered 80.89 euros a share.

Stocks in Review

Darden Restaurants ((DRI)) increased 1.2% after it reported third quarter net income declined 18% on weaker than expected sales at Red Lobster but earnings were still ahead of market expectations.

Marin Software Inc soared 37% after the ad-tracking software company priced 7.5 million shares at $14 a share and raised $105 million in initial public offering. The San Francisco based software company offers a subscription based software platform to manage and monitor ad performance on multiple web sites.

Micron Technology ((MU)) soared 9% after the memory chip maker reported better than estimated revenues and gross margin but quarterly loss was larger than expected.

Nike Inc ((NKE)) soared 10% after the maker of expensive athletic shoes reported higher than expected quarterly results.

Salesforce.com ((CRM)) gained 1% after the web-based sales management software developer announced a 4-for-1 stock split.

Tibco Software ((TIBX)) plunged 14% after the risk management and financial services software developer reported lower than expected sales and gross margins declined.

Tiffany ((TIF)) gained as much as 5% after the jewelry retailer offered optimistic earnings and revenues outlook for the current year.