Dow Jones Today Gains on This Top Market-Moving News

Dow Jones Today: At the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 40.39 points to finish at 16,573.00. The Nasdaq increased 8.42 points, finishing at 4,276.46, while the S&P 500 climbed 5.38 points to finish at 1,890.90.

Here's a recap of other major events today:

Dow Jones Today

  1. A Shaky Recovery: International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned investors and central bankers today that the global economy faces "years of slow and subpar growth." The IMF director increased calls for central banks to more aggressively spur growth. Lagarde stated that risks like low inflation in Europe, market volatility, and geopolitical tensions in Ukraine and Venezuela could stall the global recovery. The IMF now projects that global growth in 2014 will be above 3%; however, the U.S. economy is still trickling along below that target. Most of the global growth will continue to come from Asian emerging markets, which are expected to increase by 6.5%. China, despite its currency and trade concerns, will increase at 7.5% in 2014, according to the IMF.
  2. Jeff Bezos Starts the Fire: The television wars heated up again today as Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) unveiled its new TV streaming box called "Fire TV." The device allows users to stream movies and television shows from their Prime accounts, while accessing additional apps like Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) and Hulu. Fire TV also offers viewing apps from Walt Disney Co.'s (NYSE: DIS) ESPN and CBS Corp.'s (NYSE: CBS) Showtime to anyone with a cable or satellite subscription. The initial sales price is $99 and is now available online. With Amazon's dominance in new markets, our Michael Robinson suggests that its CEO Jeff Bezos is one of the five executives in tech industry who can make you rich...
  3. Capital Flight: It's a bad time to be Bill Gross and PIMCO. Investors pulled another net $3.1 billion from the company's flagship Pimco Total Return Fund in March. Morningstar data states that it is the 11th consecutive month of outflows from the world's largest bond fund. Since May 2013, investors have pulled more than $52.1 billion from the fund, according to Morningstar. Reuters states that the fund's performance lagged behind 95% of its peers due to a number of poor positions and decisions by Gross over the last year.
  4. This next major event in the market today is one of the most profitable stories of the year...

  5. The IPO Bonanza Rolls On: The first quarter of 2014 was the busiest three months of initial public offerings since 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom. According to Renaissance Capital, 64 companies have gone public since Jan. 1. That's the highest total in more than a decade, and the companies raised more than $10.6 billion after going public. Michael Reagan at Bloomberg wrote today that "the Bloomberg IPO Index, which gauges the performance of stocks during their first year, surged 64% in 2013." According to Reagan, this snapped a two-year decline for the index, which more than doubled the S&P 500's performance for the year. And the IPO market is still booming with the recent announcement that Alibaba, the world's largest e-commerce company, is set to come to an American exchange later this year. The Alibaba IPO could be one of the largest IPOs in market history.
  6. Feeding America: On Wednesday, Monsanto Co. (NYSE: MON) reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings, sending shares up more than 1.5%. The company noted that increased demand in corn and soybeans around the world drove higher profits. The company is expected to reach record volumes in its corn business in 2014, despite the fact that acreage for corn plantings will be down 4% in the U.S. market.

Wednesday's Top Three Profit Opportunities

  1. The Best Play in a Trillion-Dollar Market: Activist investor Carl Icahn just cleared our path to a big profit - a company in a hot new market whose shares could surge 50% in the next two years. Michael Robinson wants to tell you how Icahn did this - and show you the stock that's ready to run.
  2. The Clock Is Ticking: There's an immense new challenge to the U.S. role in the global economy that few are watching. It's a dominant role we've held since the latter part of World War II, and for 70 years it's gone largely unchallenged. Until now. As Shah Gilani explains, the story isn't complicated, but it will be disturbing to some... and profitable to others...
  3. Cash In on Russia's Booming Tech Market: Everyone is bearish on the Russian markets following the Crimean crisis. That's a big mistake. Russian stocks - especially Russian tech stocks - offer some of the biggest profit opportunities we see today. And as our Bill Patalon explains, there's one tech stock to buy now that offers a massive potential upside...

About the Author

Garrett Baldwin is a globally recognized research economist, financial writer, consultant, and political risk analyst with decades of trading experience and degrees in economics, cybersecurity, and business from Johns Hopkins, Purdue, Indiana University, and Northwestern.

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