STOCKS GO NOWHERE, TWITTER SURGES: Here’s What You Need To Know

MYLES UDLAND

NOV. 13, 2014

Kimberly White/Getty Images

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.

Stocks on Wall Street went nowhere on Wednesday, with the Dow and S&P 500 falling slightly and the Nasdaq gaining 0.3%. Shares of social media company Twitter were big winners on Wednesday, gaining more than 7% as the company held an analyst day for the investment community. 

First, the scoreboard:

• Dow: 17,611, -3.1, (-0.02%)
• S&P 500: 2,038, -1.2, (-0.06%)
• Nasdaq: 4,674.7, +14, (+0.3%)

And now, the top stories on Wednesday:

1. The economic calendar is light this week, but on Wednesday we got the latest report on wholesale inventories, which rose 0.3% month-on-month in September which was better than consensus expectations for a 0.2% rise. In a note to clients following this report, Jesse Hurwitz at Barclays said that the changes, which include slight downward revision to August’s data, “suggest a slightly stronger profile than previously estimated,” though Hurwitz and Barclays kept their third quarter GDP tracking estimate at 3%. 

2. The big stock mover on Wednesday was Twitter, which rose more than 7%, its best day since the summer, as the social media company held its first analyst day and made some bullish predictions about its future. Business Insider’s Jay Yarow has the full report on comments made by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo regarding some of the company’s future plans, but the big news out of its analyst day was this chart from Twitter CFO Anthony Noto. The chart shows Twitter’s revenue growing to $14 billion in ten years, and while Noto said this is not a forecast, Jay noted that this is an unusual, and risky, chart and puts a big target on Twitter’s back. 

3. Goldman Sachs announced its new partners on Wednesday, and Business Insider Julia La Roche has the full list of the firm’s 78 new partners. This brings the list of partners at Goldman to 467, or 1.6% of the firm’s full-time staff. 

4. A big loser on Wednesday were shares of SeaWorld, which fell more than 9% after the theme park operator again reported a decline in attendance. The drop in SeaWorld shares of Wednesday follows a more than 30% drop in the stock price seen back in August, as the company still struggles with the fallout from CNN’s documentary “Blackfish.” 

5. This morning, Macy’s cut its earnings and sales outlook for the year, while also reporting a disappointing 1.3% decline in revenue during the third quarter. “We knew we were up against very strong third-quarter sales growth for our company last year, and thus we had anticipated that our year-over-year comparison would be lower,” Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren said. “Even so, sales did not live up to our expectations in the quarter.”

6. Wednesday marked four weeks since the stock market bottomed on October 15, and in an email on Wednesday morning, Jonathan Krinsky at MKM Partners highlighted some impressive facts about the recent stock snapback. Overall, the S&P 500 fell about 9% peak-to-trough through late summer to the October bottom, but rose 12% after bottoming out in just 19 trading days. In the fall of 2012, stocks fell by a similar amount, but didn’t rise 12% from the bottom for 49 days. And as of Tuesday, the S&P 500 had been trading above its five-day moving average for 18 straight days, one of the longest streaks since 1996, which indicates strong short-term momentum in the stock market.