Dow Jones (DJIA) Today: Merck (MRK) Higher
Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link
.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
(
^DJI
) is trading up 23 points (+0.1%) at 18,119 as of Thursday, Mar 5, 2015, 1:36 p.m. ET. During this time, 138.4 million shares of the 30 Dow components have changed hands vs. an average daily trading volume of 375 million. The NYSE advances/declines ratio sits at 1,544 issues advancing vs. 1,435 declining with 174 unchanged.
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The Dow component leading the way higher looks to be
(NYSE:
), which is sporting a five-cent gain to $57.93. This single gain is lifting the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 0.38 points or roughly accounting for 1.7% of the Dow's overall gain. Volume for Merck currently sits at 5.5 million shares traded vs. an average daily trading volume of 11 million shares.
Merck has a market cap of $165.58 billion and is part of the health care sector and drugs industry. Shares are up 1.9% year-to-date as of Wednesday's close. The stock's dividend yield sits at 3.1%.
Merck & Co., Inc. provides various health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, animal health, and consumer care products worldwide.
TheStreet Ratings rates Merck as a
. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its compelling growth in net income, expanding profit margins, impressive record of earnings per share growth and increase in stock price during the past year. Although no company is perfect, currently we do not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook.
- You can view the full Merck Ratings Report.
.
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