Stocks Finish Higher For A Fifth Day/Dollar Gains Across The Board
Stocks Finish Higher For A Fifth Day/Dollar Gains Across The Board
Stocks closed the shortened session higher for a fifth day on speculation Black Friday, the traditional start of holiday shopping season, will surprise to the upside. Meanwhile, the dollar advanced against the euro, pound, yen, Australian and Canadian dollars along with the Swiss franc.
Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren said that Black Friday is turning out better than he anticipated. “I was expecting that today would start off weaker than last year,” Mr. Lundgren said. “But so far, that’s not the case.”
More than 5,000 people were lined up outside Macy’s Herald Square at 5:00 am this morning waiting to get in on the retailer’s 200 door-buster specials. Last year, Mr. Lundgren said, there were fewer people queued up outside, and only 25 door-buster specials. Still, the fear retailers have is that shoppers will grab the door-busters and little of anything else.
Tragically, a male Wal-Mart worker died shortly after shoppers broke through the doors at 5 a.m. and trampled him at the Green Acres Shopping Center in Long Island, N.Y. According to Nassau County Police Department spokesman Michael Aronsen, he was pronounced dead at the hospital an hour later in what the police are considering to be an “undetermined death.”
“It was like rush hour traffic around the malls this morning,” Mr. Aronsen said.
At the close of floor trading on the NYSE, the DOW was on 8840.33 after gaining 113.72 points (1.30%). The S&P closed on 896.24, up 8.56 points (0.96%) while the NASDAQ finished the day’s trading on 1535.57 with a gain of 3.47 points (0.23%). Bonds were bought along with stocks for a third day since the Fed announced its new purchasing facilities. The yield on the 2-year note fell 9.9 basis points to 1.003% while yield on the 10-year note lost 5.4 basis points to 2.925%. The dollar traded higher against all the major currencies, with gains of 0.10% on the pound, 1.60% on the euro and 0.37% on the yen.
NYMEX crude for December delivery finished trading up 63 cents (1.16%) to %55.07 per barrel.
COMEX gold for December delivery finished trading up $8.50 (1.05%) to $819.80 per ounce.
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