Building permits climbed in July to lift the markets to a higher open with the Dow adding 5 points to 13,170. Nasdaq rose 9 points to 3040. On the upside
Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) reported higher fourth quarter earnings that topped analyst estimates and lifted its dividend to 14 cents per share. Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) impressed with sharply higher second quarter earnings that more than triple to surpass analyst expectations by a wide margin. The New York Post reported that KKR and Providence Equity Partners may have engaged in exploratory discussions with Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) to acquire the game software publisher. On the downside The lockup period for Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) insiders expired this morning which released 270 million shares of the social networking site.Shares of Groupon (Nasdaq: GRPN) continued falling after reporting slowing growth Monday after market close. The Food and Drug Administration placed Idenix Pharmaceuticals' (Nasdaq: IDIX) hepatitis C treatment IDX184 on partial clinical hold for safety reasons. In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of nearly 5 to 4 on the NYSE and by more than 7 to 5 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks slipped 3 points to 800.