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US stocks claw back large chunk of Friday's losses

Published: 10:16 21 Sep 2015 EDT

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US stocks came flying out of the gate, clawing back a chunk of Friday’s hefty losses.

Ahead of a speech this afternoon from Atlanta Fed president Dennis Lockhart, the major benchmarks followed European markets higher.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 111 points, or 0.68%, at 16,497 after around 45 minutes of trading, while the broader-based S&P 500 was 11 points firmer at 1,969; the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was 30 points to the good at 4,857.

Home sales data for August shows that the prices of existing homes continues to rise, but this may be deterring buyers, as sales of previously owned homes fell for the first time in four months.

Sales fell 4.8% to an annual rate of 5.31mln units from a revised 5.57mln in July. Economists had expected August’s sales to decline to an annual rate of 5.52mln.

Talking of home sales, house builder Lennar (NYSE:LEN) has reported profit of US$223mln for its end-August quarter, equivalent to 96 cents a share. Analysts who follow the company had a consensus earnings forecast of 81 cents. Earnings per share in the same quarter of last year were 78 cents.

Shares rose 1.6% to US$52.59.

Investors do not seem overly fussed by weekend news that malware (malicious software) had been embedded in otherwise legitimate Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) apps.

The gadget maker’s products have a good record when it comes to software safety, due largely to the company’s policy of keeping tight control over what can and can’t run on its operating system.

Shares rose 84 cents to US$114.29 as the company countered the bad publicity with news that the roll-out last week of its new operating system last week had seen record levels of adoption.

GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO), the “action camera” technology firm, was off 6% at US$33.02 after being branded a “one product wonder” by investment publication Barron’s.

Barron’s Alexander Eule reckons the stock could slide all the way to US$25 as competitors muscle in on its market. Eule cites the examples of Blackberry and Palm as once dominant companies that quickly saw their flagship products taken down by a new wave of competing products.

Atmel (NASDAQ:ATML) was wanted, surging 15.8% to US$8.42 after agreeing to a US$4.5bn takeover from Anglo-German company Dialog Semiconductor (OTCMKTS:DLGNF, FRA:DLG).

Atmel shareholders will get US$4.65 in cash and 0.112 of a Dialog Semiconductor American depository share for each Atmel common share, equivalent to US$10.42 per Atmel share based on Dialog's closing price as of September 18, U.K.-based Dialog said.

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