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US stock market turns mixed after Alibaba debut
[September 19, 2014]

US stock market turns mixed after Alibaba debut


(Associated Press Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) NEW YORK (AP) — The stock market drifted in afternoon trading as Wall Street watched Alibaba soar in its public debut. The Standard & Poor's 500 index wavered above the record level reached the day before but remains on track to turn in its best weekly gain in a month.



KEEPING SCORE: As of 1:10 p.m. Eastern time, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 24 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,291. The S&P 500 index slipped one point, a fraction of a percent, to 2,010. The Nasdaq composite fell 24 points, or 0.5 percent, to 4,570.

ALIBABA IPO: The Chinese giant Alibaba soared 33 percent in its first day on the New York Stock Exchange, gaining $22.38 to $90.45. The online retailer priced its initial public offering of stock at $68 a share late Thursday, raising $21.8 billion from investors. In terms of market value, the IPO made Alibaba bigger than Amazon.com but smaller than the titan of tech, Google.


IN DEMAND: "We know there's a lot of demand from institutional and retail investors, so it's not a surprise to see it rally that quickly." said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade, the online brokerage.

"We thought it would be like a Twitter in terms of investor interest, but it's more like Facebook. We have three times as many orders as we had for Twitter." GETTING OUT: Shares in Yahoo! sank $1.56, or 4 percent, to $40.57. The company reportedly sold 121 million shares of Alibaba in the Chinese company's IPO.

LATER, LARRY: Oracle's stock sank 5 percent following the announcement late Thursday that Larry Ellison, the tech company's billionaire founder, is stepping down as CEO after 37 years. Ellison remains Oracle's biggest shareholder, owning a quarter of the software maker. Oracle's stock dropped $1.90 to $39.66.

CLOUD LAND: SAP, the German business-software company, announced plans to buy Concur Technologies for $7.4 billion. Concur provides online software for managing business expenses. Its stock soared $19.31, or 18 percent, to $127.11. That's below SAP's bid of $129 per share.

IT'S A NAY: Britain's main stock index made gains after voters in Scotland rejected a referendum to break from the U.K. Some warned that if Scotland left, uncertainty over the future value of the British pound and government debt would have rattled the U.K economy.

EUROPE: Britain's FTSE 100 advanced 0.3 percent. France's CAC 40 slipped 0.1 percent, and Germany's DAX was flat.

THE QUOTE: "Trading desks have been staffed in London, with all hands on deck around Asia and Australia," said Chris Weston, chief strategist at IG Markets in Melbourne, Australia. "The market was always positioned for Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom." ASIA'S DAY: Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 1.6 percent as the yen's weakness gave a boost to companies that rely on exports. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.6 percent while the Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China gained 0.6 percent.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude oil slipped 52 cents to $91.47 a barrel in New York.

AB Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed from Hong Kong Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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