As for individual stocks, shares of Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ: COST) rose after the retailer reported a solid quarter, and Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) stumbled following surprisingly weak guidance. Comps in the U.S. grew 8.7% excluding gas inflation and currency, with 1.5 percentage points of that growth resulting from Thanksgiving weekend falling in the first quarter this year. Earlier this year, investors drove the stock price down over 15% on worry that the warehouse giant would be hurt along with other brick-and-mortar retailers as online buying grew, but sales growth numbers have looked very good the past two quarters.
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