Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index were essentially flat Wednesday morning, after disappointing jobs data left investors slightly deflated:
ADP said the economy added 158,000 private-sector jobs in March.
Economists surveyed by MarketWatch forecast ADP to show private payrolls rose by 215,000 in March after a 198,000 rise in February.
Economists warn against reading too much into the ADP figures, however. While the data has a strong long-term correlation with the Labor Department�s private-payroll series, it can be at odds with government data on a monthly basis. In February, ADP private payrolls undershot the government�s estimate by 246,000 jobs.
Newfield Exploration (NFX) is leading big-cap stocks premarket, up 7% after delivering some very good news late yesterday:
Newfield Exploration said it has made a significant natural-gas discovery off Sarawak, Malaysia, and said it is looking to sell its international business…
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Lee K. Boothby said the latest find was the largest conventional exploratory success that Newfield had made in its 25-year history. He cited recent amendments to gas terms in Malaysia that made natural-gas developments economically competitive with oil developments.
Newfield also said that it plans open a data room, which will allow potential acquirers to conduct due diligence, for its international businesses in the second quarter. The company said in February that its board approved the evaluation of strategic alternatives for the businesses, which consist of offshore developments and related projects in Malaysia and China.
Tesla Motors (TSLA) stock is off about 2.5% this morning — it seems that after the expectation triggered by Elon Musk’s Twitter feed which had helped the stock rise about 20% and hit record highs in the past week, some investors were underwhelmed when yesterday’s big news was simply that the company will offer financing to buy its electric cars.
Shares of ConAgra Foods (CAG) are off 2% after its quarterly earnings missed Wall Street expectations:
For the quarter ended Feb. 24, ConAgra reported a profit of $120 million, or 29 cents a share, down from $280.1 million, or 67 cents, a year earlier. The latest period included 16 cents a share in acquisition-related costs. Excluding those and other special items, per-share earnings from continuing operations rose to 55 cents from 53 cents.
Sales grew 13% to $3.85 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had most recently forecast adjusted earnings of 56 cents a share on revenue of $3.87 billion.
And finally, if you’re an avid investor but not a social media maven it may be time to rethink one or the other — a new rule yesterday means that social media is likely to play a much bigger role in corporate new announcements:
In a ruling that portends changes to how companies communicate with investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that postings on sites such as�Facebook�and Twitter are just as good as news releases and company websites as long as the companies have told investors which outlets they intend to use…
In 2008, the SEC said that companies could use their corporate home pages, under certain circumstances, to disseminate sensitive information.
In its Tuesday ruling, the agency said social-media sites would also suffice�in some circumstances. It blessed sites as long as companies make clear to investors they plan to use them.
Welcome to the future.
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