Stocks opened little changed but have weakened in the latter part of the morning. The consumer confidence reading from the University of Michigan was slightly below the prior month’s figure and the bitcoin market has seen another round of profit taking and is now roughly 33% from its recent highs. ECONOMIC EVENTS: In the U.S., durable goods orders rebounded 1.3% in November, though that was shy of expectations for a 2% bounceback. Personal income rose 0.3% in November, which was a tick below the consensus forecast, with spending up 0.6%, a tick above expectations. The final December print from the University of Michigan survey showed consumer sentiment fell to 95.9, down from the 96.8 December preliminary read and November’s 98.5 reading. New home sales climbed 17.5% to a 733,000 rate in November, marking the strongest rate since July 2007. COMPANY NEWS: Shares of Nike (NKE) are down about 3% despite the sneaker giant’s report of better than expected quarterly profits last night. However, JPMorgan analyst Matthew Boss noted that Nike’s earnings outlook for Q3 came in 25% below consensus expectations and Wedbush analyst Christopher Svezia said the company pushed further out its expectations for inflections in sales and gross margins in the “essential” North American market… Alphabet (GOOG), Google’s parent company, announced last night that Eric Schmidt is stepping down as executive chairman. Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001 and was named its executive chairman in 2011, will become a technical advisor to the company while continuing to serve on its board. In other management news, Papa John’s announced that John Schnatter, the company’s founder, is stepping down as CEO… Coinbase, one of the largest bitcoin marketplaces in the U.S., said that buying and selling has been temporarily disabled amid a price rout in cryptocurrencies. As of time of writing, bitcoin dropped nearly 28% this week to $12,703 in U.S. dollars, with much of that slide occurring this morning. A number of stocks that have tried to recently hitch their hopes to bitcoin or blockchain – such as Overstock (OSTK), Digital Power (DPW), Long Blockchain Corp. (LTEA), Riot Blockchain (RIOT) and Social Reality (SRAX) – are sliding as well. MAJOR MOVERS: Among the notable gainers was Ignyta (RXDX), which jumped 72% to $26.78, just below the agreed-upon deal price, after announcing it will be bought by Roche (RHHBY) for $27 per share. Also higher was La Jolla Pharmaceutical (LJPC), which gained 11% after the FDA granted earlier than expected approval of Giapreza for increasing blood pressure in association with the treatment of septic or distributive shock. Among the noteworthy losers was Celgene (CELG), which dropped 2% after reporting that the Revlimid plus rituximab treatment arm of the RELEVANCE study did not achieve superiority in its co-primary endpoints. Also lower were shares of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which slid 8% after chairman and chief executive officer Vincent McMahon sold stock amid speculation that he could be restarting the XFL. Separately, an analyst downgraded the stock to Neutral, saying the benefit from tax reform is insufficient to justify the outperformance of the stock this year. INDEXES: Near midday, the Dow was down 45.40, or 0.18%, to 24,736.89, the Nasdaq was down 16.22, or 0.23%, to 6,949.14, and the S&P 500 was down 4.48, or 0.17%, to 2,680.09.
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