Stocks climbed higher Wednesday as the broader market moved to continue its comeback from the one-day plunge at the start of the week. All three benchmarks rose higher, with the Dow Jones now sitting about 1% from it's all-time high.
Here's how the market settled on Wednesday:
S&P 500 Index
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Nasdaq Composite Index
Wedbush calls Netflix's move into videogames "ill-advised":
Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote in a note on Wednesday that Netflix's move into video games may end up being an "ill-advised foray."
"While Netflix commented that it will initially focus on mobile games, we question whether the company has any idea how difficult the mobile games business has become," Pachter wrote. "The business graveyard is littered with the corpses of content companies that have failed at making mobile games, with Disney
Pachter added that Netflix could face "significant hurdles" trying to attract new audiences for its games, especially as its subscriber growth has declined in the recent quarter.
Microsoft to acquire security start-up CloudKnox:
Microsoft
CloudKnox's software is compatible with Microsoft's Azure public cloud, as well as clouds developed by Amazon
This acquisition marks another move by the tech giant to amp up its security offerings. Last week, Microsoft announced the acquisition of another security company, RiskIQ, which can spot threats across a company's entire internet footprint.
Johnson & Johnson expects to sell $2.5 billion of COVID vaccine in 2021:
Johnson & Johnson
In the second quarter, J&J's pharmaceutical arm generated $12.59 billion in revenue, a 17.2% increase year-over-year. The business segment's chairman, Jennifer Taubert, says the unit expects to continue to see strong sales regardless of COVID variants and any other "blips" related to the pandemic.
Here's how the market started trading after open:
S&P 500 Index: +0.44% or +18.87 points to 4,341.93
Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.55% or +188.94 points to 34,700.93
Nasdaq Composite Index: +0.29% or +42.65 points to 14,541.53