Dow Today: American Express (AXP) Lower

Editor's Note: TheStreet ratings do not represent the views of TheStreet's staff or its contributors. Ratings are established by computer based on metrics for performance (which includes growth, stock performance, efficiency and valuation) and risk (volatility and solvency). Companies with poor cash flow or high debt levels tend to earn lower ratings in our model.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) is trading down 229.0 points (-1.7%) at 13,116 as of Tuesday, Oct 23, 2012, 1:35 p.m. ET. During this time, 402 million shares of the 30 Dow components have changed hands vs. an average daily trading volume of 572.3 million. The NYSE advances/declines ratio sits at 617 issues advancing vs. 2,341 declining with 104 unchanged.

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Holding back the Dow today is American Express (NYSE:AXP), which is lagging the broader Dow index with a $1.03 decline (-1.8%) bringing the stock to $55.71. This single loss is lowering the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 7.8 points or roughly accounting for 3.4% of the Dow's overall loss. Volume for American Express currently sits at 4.5 million shares traded vs. an average daily trading volume of five million shares.

American Express has a market cap of $64.46 billion and is part of the financial sector and financial services industry. Shares are up 20.3% year to date as of Monday's close. The stock's dividend yield sits at 1.4%.

American Express Company provides charge and credit payment card products and travel-related services to customers worldwide. The company has a P/E ratio of 13.2, 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 high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated.

• You can view the full American Express Ratings Report.

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