Stocks Turn Higher in Choppy Trading

U.S. Market
Stocks were higher this morning in choppy trading.

Initial unemployment claims rose by 3,000 to 265,000 last week. The less-volatile four-week moving average of climes was down 4,250 to 279,500. The data remains near 15-years lows and comes ahead of tomorrow’s closely-watched payroll and unemployment rate report.

At midday the Dow and Nasdaq were each up 0.4% while the S&P 500 rose 0.3%.

Stocks on the Move
Shares of Alibaba (BABA) rose over 7% this morning after the firm reported better-than –excepted results. The Chinese Internet giant said that both its revenue and earnings came in ahead of analyst estimates. The firm also announced that CEO Jonathan LU was stepping down to be replaced by current COO Daniel Zhang.

Priceline (PCLN) reported better-than-expected results this morning. The firm said it earned $6.42 a share, up from $6.25 a share in the year-ago quarter. However, management’s guidance for next quarter was well below expectations sending shares down over 3%.

Whole Foods (WFM) reported a slowdown in same-store sales growth for the second quarter. Same-store sales increased 3.6%, driven by 5.1% growth in the first three weeks and 2.4% growth in the last nine weeks. Transactions increased 0.8% and average basket size increased 2.8%, although management could not single out any one factor as driving the growth slowdown; increasing competition, cannibalization, and weather all contributed. Management also announced a new value store concept that is complementary to Whole Foods. Shares plunged nearly 10% on the news.

Foreign Markets
European markets pared losses in late trading, but still ended mostly lower. The FTSE 100 was down 0.7%, the Paris CAC was off 0.3% while Germany’s DAX rose 0.5%.

Asian shares slumped today. The Shanghai Composite, Hang Seng and Nikkei 225 were off 2.8%, 1.3% and 1.2% respectively.