Stock Market Today, May 15, 2014: The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped as many as 200 points on Thursday on lukewarm housing numbers, poor retail earnings, and a sell-off in small-cap stocks.
Now here are the top stories from the stock market today:
Banks Behaving Badly:The Wall Street Journal reports that Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE ADR: CS) will likely pay about $2.5 billion to settle charges that it helped Americans evade taxes. The deal will feature a guilty plea to the charges and pay $100 million to the U.S. Federal Reserve, $600 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services, and a little more than $1.7 billion to the Justice Department. Financiers on Wall Street are very concerned about the reputational damage that Credit Suisse could face with a guilty plea. In addition, Wall Street is worried that regulators could use any guilty plea in order to revoke a bank's charter, which would ripple through the financial sector.
Blame It on the Weather: Bad news for U.S. industrial production. The Federal Reserve announced that bad weather affected April's factory output, falling by 0.4%. The Philadelphia Fed Index also underwhelmed. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank announced that its business activity index slipped to 15.4 from 16.6 in April. Still, the figure beat economists' expectations of 14.0.
Cisco Surprises: Shares of Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) popped this morning after the company crushed guidance expectations for the year. The company is experiencing a huge boost in demand for networking machines to process mobile-data traffic. Bloomberg reports that its CEO John Chambers, who has been at the helm for 19 years, is attempting to turnaround the company shortly before they announce his successor.
Retail Woes Continue: Shares of both Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Kohl's Corp. (NYSE: KSS) were off more than 2% after both reported weak quarterly earnings. Analysts again blamed winter weather for the companies' woes, though both companies maintained their guidance levels for 2014.
Knowing When to Fold 'Em: Shares of Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DBK) slipped by 1.5% on Thursday after its six-year stint of losing money in casino development finally came to a close. The bank announced its sale of the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas hotel and casino to Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) in an all-cash deal worth $1.73. Shares of Blackstone slipped by more than 2% today.
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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.