Dow Today: American Express (AXP) Lower

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) is trading down 84.0 points (-0.6%) at 13,184 as of Thursday, May 3, 2012, 1:35 p.m. ET. During this time, 323.6 million shares of the 30 Dow components have changed hands vs. an average daily trading volume of 739.1 million. The NYSE advances/declines ratio sits at 828 issues advancing vs. 2,114 declining with 128 unchanged.

Holding back the Dow today is American Express (NYSE:AXP), which is lagging the broader Dow index with a 17-cent decline (-0.3%) bringing the stock to $60.88. This single loss is lowering the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 1.29 points or roughly accounting for 1.5% of the Dow's overall loss. Volume for American Express currently sits at 4.2 million shares traded vs. an average daily trading volume of 6.3 million shares.

American Express has a market cap of $71.23 billion and is part of the financial sector and financial services industry. Shares are up 29.4% year to date as of Wednesday's close. The stock's dividend yield sits at 1.3%.

American Express Company provides charge and credit payment card products, and travel-related services to worldwide. The company has a P/E ratio of 14.6, equal to the average financial services industry P/E ratio and below the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7.

TheStreet Ratings rates American Express as a buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its growth in earnings per share, revenue growth, notable return on equity, increase in net income and solid stock price performance. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally poor debt management on most measures that we evaluated.

• You can view the full American Express Ratings Report.

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