The Other Side of Life 24/7: Daily Investor Briefing: Wall Street mostly flat as post-Sandy...

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Daily Investor Briefing: Wall Street mostly flat as post-Sandy...

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10/31/2012

Reuters Election 2012 Daily round-up of the day's top news from the campaign trail, the White House and all the politics in between

Wall Street mostly flat as post-Sandy trading resumes

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed little changed on Wednesday after a forced two-day closure due to super storm Sandy, as gains in utilities and financial shares offset declines in the healthcare and technology sectors.

Netflix shares soar after Icahn reports 10 percent stake

(Reuters) - Shares of Netflix Inc rose as much as 20 percent on Wednesday after activist investor Carl Icahn reported a stake of nearly 10 percent in the company, which offers subscriptions to watch movies and TV shows over the Internet and on DVDs.

Visa authorizes $1.5 billion buyback, profit rises 89 percent

(Reuters) - Visa Inc's fourth-quarter profit rose 89 percent and the world's largest credit and debit-card network authorized a new $1.5 billion share repurchase program and raised its dividend by 50 percent.

Wall Street scrambles to raise cash after Sandy

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street firms and U.S. banks scrambled to raise cash on Wednesday, as U.S. financial markets resumed normal trading after a devastating storm pummeled the U.S. East Coast and closed major markets for two days.

Power outage hits Knight Capital, cuts off trading

(Reuters) - A failed backup power generator has forced Knight Capital Group to tell clients to route all stock orders away from the brokerage on Wednesday, as the effects of Sandy, the massive storm that slammed into the U.S. East Coast, were still being felt.

GM sees European operations breaking even by mid-decade

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co posted a surprisingly strong profit on Wednesday on higher sales and vehicle prices, mainly in the United States, and said it was targeting a return to break-even levels in its European operations by mid-decade.

U.S. banks report reopening local offices closed by storm

(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co , Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo & Co said on Wednesday they have reopened more than half of the branches that were closed as Hurricane Sandy battered the U.S. East Coast early this week.

Thomson Reuters investigates foreign exchange client

(Reuters) - Thomson Reuters Corp is investigating whether one of its currency trading customers gained an unfair advantage when making high speed foreign exchange trades on its platform.

JPMorgan sues former London Whale boss

LONDON (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co is suing the former boss of Bruno Iksil, the trader known as the London Whale, for the outsized derivatives positions he took that cost the bank $6.2 billion.

Sandy spending hopes drive rally for recovery companies

(Reuters) - Hurricane Sandy has caused tens of billions of dollars in damage up and down the U.S. East Coast, but the recovery and reconstruction spending that will follow could pump an almost equal amount right back into the economy, driving a rally for some stocks as markets reopened on Wednesday.