NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- U.S. stocks gained ground Thursday with the S&P 500 finishing above 1400 for the first time since June 2008.
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In Wednesday's session, buying momentum faded with the Dow and Nasdaq eking out fractional gains while the S&P 500 broke a five-day win streak. Stocks got a lift from gains in the financial sector following the Federal Reserve's "stress tests" of big U.S. banks. On Thursday, Germany's DAX closed up 0.8% while London's FTSE finished down 0.2%. The Hong Kong Hang Seng closed up 0.21% while the Nikkei Average in Japan gained 0.72% overnight.
April oil futures closed lower by 32 cents to $105.11. In other commodities, April gold futures were down 70 cents to $1,658.80. The dollar index was 0.4% lower. The benchmark 10-year Treasury was down 2/32, pushing the yield to 2.28%. In corporate news, Cisco agreed to acquire NDS, a developer of software for multichannel television networks, for $5 billion. NDS, which operates a large development center in Jerusalem, is 51%-owned by buyout firm Permira and 49% by News Corp. ( NWSA). Cisco was down 1.4% to $19.91. Guess? ( GES), the fashion apparel and accessories company, reported fourth-quarter revenue below analysts' expectations and provided a weak outlook. Guess? posted fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $95.9 million, or $1.05 a share, on revenue of $775.8 million. It earned $103.3 million, or $1.11 a share, a year earlier. Analysts were expecting profit of $1.05 a share in the quarter on revenue of $778 million. Shares plunged 10.2% to $32.97. Communications solutions provider Avaya will buy video conferencing and visual communications provider Radvision ( RVSN) for $11.85 a share in cash, putting the value of the deal at about $230 million. The price represents a premium of about 57% over Radvision's average closing share price during the 90 trading days ended Wednesday. Radvision shares popped 4.5% to $11.70. Capital One ( COF) said it would sell $1.25 billion worth of stock in a secondary offering. The bank plans to use the proceeds of the sale to fund part of its purchase of HSBC's U.S. credit card business, a deal that received regulatory approval last week. Shares were up 2.5% to $53.63. Google ( GOOG) will begin undergoing a major, long-term overhaul of its search-engine over the next few months to improve the quality of its search queries functions, according to The Wall Street Journal. Shares were up 0.8% at $621.13. -- Written by Andrea Tse and Chao Deng in New York. >To contact the writer of this article, click here: Andrea Tse. >To follow the writer on Twitter, go to http://twitter.com/atwtse . >To submit a news tip, send an email to: tips@thestreet.com.
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