On the upside
Shares of Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose after Forrester Research said that online sales are expected to climb 13% in 2010 to approximately $176.9 billion.The Dow Jones Newswires reported that the Irish government is expected to increase its bailout funds for troubled banks Allied Irish Bank (NYSE: AIB) and Bank of Ireland (NYSE: IRE) by approximately $8.9 billion.
Shares of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose over optimism that President Obama's economic stimulus package will benefit technology companies.
On the downside
Concerns that Huntington Bancshares (Nasdaq: HBAN) must raise dilutive capital due to soaring credit losses weighed down shares of the bank.Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) named Leonard DeAngelo as senior vice president of Asia operations and Nigel Roberts as president of its Marina Bay Sands, which will open in Singapore at the end of 2009.
Moody's Investors Service downgraded Regions Financial (NYSE: RF).
In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of more than 4 to 3 on the NYSE whle advancers edged out decliners by more than 5 to 4 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks climbed 6 points to 450.
