Filed under: Stock activity

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Macy’s returns to profitability in first quarter

Associated Press | Macy’s Inc. returned to profitability in the first quarter as the department store operator saw sales pick up on efforts to tailor its merchandise to local markets. However, the department store operator, which boosted its annual outlook last month, said it’s too early to further raise its guidance for the year because of economic uncertainty. Still, shares rose more than 2 percent, or 54 cents, to $24.44 in early morning trading.

Get the full story: Macy’s returns to profitability in first quarter.

SEC: Regulators yet to determine cause of plunge

Associated Press | Regulators need more time to figure out what
caused last week’s stock market plunge, the head of the Securities and
Exchange Commission told a congressional panel Tuesday.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said her agency has yet to pinpoint the
reason for the sell-off that sent the Dow Jones industrial average down
nearly 1,000 points in less than half an hour, stunning Wall Street and
Washington.

“We will move as quickly as we can but I can’t give you a final date,”
Schapiro said at a hearing examining the historic market drop.

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Carl Icahn boosts stake in Motorola to 8.8%

By Wailin Wong
|
Activist investor Carl Icahn has raised his stake in
Schaumburg-based
Motorola Inc. to 8.75 percent, according to a Friday filing with the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Icahn and his investment vehicles last disclosed their Motorola holdings
in May 2008, reporting a 7.6 percent stake.

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Stocks maintain gains after investor fears calm

Stock-Two-Web.jpgA pair of specialists work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, May 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Associated Press | The stock market mostly held on to its big comeback after investors set aside worries about Europe’s debt struggles. The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 37 points after fluctuating for much of the day. Broader indexes were mixed.

Analysts said it was encouraging to see the market hold on to most of its gains from Monday, when the Dow soared 405 points in response to the creation of a bailout fund for weak countries like Greece. Tuesday’s steady trading signaled that the previous day’s big advance wasn’t solely driven by euphoria.

Get the full story: Stocks fall after excitement wanes over EU plan.

Boeing stock jumps on Goldman upgrade

Dow Jones Newswires | Shares of Boeing Co.  were up 6 percent,
to $70.72, in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange after
Goldman Sachs raised its outlook to buy from neutral. The investment
firm also upped the plane maker’s price target to $90 from $82.

“Our thesis had been that the suppliers would outperform Boeing,” the
broker said. “What we have missed with Boeing, and why we think it will
continue to outperform, is that it spans nearly every positive global
theme that is driving outperformance in stocks today: BRICs exposure,
credit normalization, a product story, the consumer recovery, favorable
industry structure, and favorable company-specific dynamics,” the broker
said.

Carl Icahn increases his stake in Motorola

By Wailin Wong
|
Activist investor Carl Icahn has raised his stake in Schaumburg-based
Motorola Inc. to 8.75 percent, according to a Friday filing with the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Icahn and his investment vehicles last disclosed their Motorola holdings
in May 2008, reporting a 7.6 percent stake.

Get the full story »

CME Group: No canceled trades from Thursday

Associated Press | CME Group Inc., which operates the Chicago Mercantile
Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, said its markets functioned
properly on Thursday during Wall Street’s wild swing, and that it was
not canceling any trades.

The company said it saw “significant market activity due to global
macroeconomic conditions” on Thursday.

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Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes buys 18.5K shares

Dow Jones Newswires | Sara Lee Chief Executive Brenda Barnes on
Friday bought 18,500 shares of her food maker’s stock, a day after the
shares fell 4 percent on the company’s earnings results.

It marked her second-largest open-market buy since she became CEO in
February 2005, according to InsiderScore.com data. Friday’s transaction
was valued at $249,900, or $13.51 a share, according to a regulatory
filing.

Get the full story »

Stocks move lower a day after wild ride

Associated Press | Turbulence continued in the stock market Friday, a day after some of the most volatile trading in history. In midday trading, the Dow was off 67.71, or 0.6 percent, to 10,452.61, as traders looked past a surprisingly strong report on the U.S. jobs market and focused instead on Europe’s spreading debt crisis and Thursday’s plunge.

Get the full story: Stocks move lower a day after wild ride.

Exelon stock briefly lost all value during panic

Trader-Two-Web.jpgTraders at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. The Dow plunged almost 1000 points on Thursday before closing down 347 points. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Dow Jones Newswires | Several companies whose market values were momentarily wiped out Thursday
said they had been contacted by the New York Stock Exchange. A spokesman from Chicago-based Exelon Corp. said the company
was looking into what happened. Exelon’s stock had been as high as $43.35
Thursday before dropping to zero. It closed off 4.2 percent at $41.86
Thursday,
and was recently down 30 cents, or 0.7 percent, at $41.55.

A
number of other companies, including Boston Beer Co. and insurance agency
and brokerage Brown & Brown Inc., saw their stocks plunge
briefly to zero or to a penny before rebounding amid Thursday’s market
turmoil.

Get the full story »

Federal Signal raises $175M in stock offer

Dow Jones Newswires | Federal Signal Corp. said it priced 10.5 million follow-on common shares at $6.25 each, raising a total of $61.7 million.

The Oak Brook-based manufacturer of communication platforms for government and industrial applications said it expects to use the proceeds from the sale to repay debt under a revolving credit facility related to the recent acquisitions of Sirit and VESystems. Federal Signal closed Thursday at $6.15, down 4.8 percent.

Ryerson delays IPO after market drop

From Bloomberg News | Chicago-based metals processor Ryerson Inc. called off its initial public offering, valued at $424 million deal, amid Thursday’s plunge in stocks.

Get the full story: businessweek.com

Wall Street’s wild ride spills into Chicago’s markets

CBOE-for-Web.jpgTraders in the S&P 500 pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange on May 6, 2010. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)


By Greg Burns
| One of the wildest 20 minutes in Wall Street history spilled into Chicago’s major markets Thursday, prompting one exchange to declare a series of trades “clearly erroneous,” and another to suggest that a hot rumor was wrong.

The CBOE Stock Exchange invoked a government-sanctioned rule to unwind 18 trades made in the stock of Chicago’s Accenture Plc that all took place within a few minutes Thursday afternoon at the price of a penny per share.

Accenture closed down $1.08 at $41.09, and no news from the company would have justified those rock-bottom trades.

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Questions swirl about what caused Dow’s plunge

Dow Jones Newswires | The plunge in U.S. markets Thursday afternoon may have been caused by a
trader who accidentally placed an order that confused billion with
million in a sale of e-minis, the futures contracts tied to equity
indexes, according to speculation swirling on Wall Street’s trading
desks.

News coverage of riots in Greece had already pushed down markets. But an
electronic trading algorithm was said to have issued a massive sell
order on futures contracts tied to the S&P 500, according to a
long-time electronic trader of the products. The market may have dropped
on a mistaken order to sell $16 billion of e-mini S&P futures, as
opposed to $16 million, according to several people.

Get the full story »

Chicago stocks for Thursday

GAINERS   % LOSERS   % MOST ACTIVE Vol (Mil)
InnerWorkings +2.67 Federal Signal -12.47 Motorola 45.96
Baxter International +0.77 Strategic Hotels -10.80 UAL Corp 22.47
Treehouse Foods +0.60 UAL Corp -9.15 Sara Lee 21.20
SPSS Inc. +0.04 Smurfit-Stone -8.20 Kraft Foods 20.82
Career Education  -0.47 Littelfuse -6.52 Caterpillar 19.36

See results from Chicago’s
Top 100 companies
.