U.S. September housing starts data well topped the consensus estimates; corporate earnings reports continued to show positive; Moody’s maintains the Spanish Baa3 sovereign debt rating; the U.S. stocks continued to climb.
The biggest gainer of the top stocks on Wednesday was Cymer, Inc. (CYMI), a supplier of light sources in the photolithography process for semiconductor, or chip manufacturing. CYMI stock price shot up 49.38%, or $23.62, to $71.45 on a volume of 14.01 million shares, far more than the average daily volume of 306,433 shares, on the back that ASML announced to buy the company at a price of 1.95 billion euros, or $2.5 billion. ASML stock price also hit a 52-week new high of $77.29 in the trading session on Wednesday. Cymer currently has a market cap of $2.22 billion.
Internet Gold Golden Lines Ltd. (IGLD) through its subsidiary B Communications Ltd. (BCOM), controls Bezeq, the principal provider of communications services in Israel. Alan Gelman, Bezeq’s CFO and Deputy CEO, said his intention to resign from the company at the end of the year. IGLD stock price rose sharply by 22.96%, or $0.95, to $5.08. The company currently has a market cap of $97.25 million. BCOM also came in as one of the top stocks on Wednesday by jumping 271.76%, or $1.48, to $8.28 with 51,909 shares traded, much more than the average daily trading volume of 18,299 shares.
TSR, Inc. (TSRI) is a provider of contract computer programming services to supplement customer’s in-house information technology (IT) capabilities. TSRI stock price soared 22.28%, or $0.88, to $4.83, after the company declared a special one-time cash dividend of $1.50 per share on its common stock, which will be paid on November 30, 2012 to stockholders of record as of October 30, 2012. The intrady volume reached 131,237 shares. Well above the average daily trading volume of 2,411 shares. TSR currently has a market cap of $9.56 million.
MGIC Investment Corp. (MTG), through its subsidiaries, operates as a private mortgage insurer in the United States. Standard & Poor’s Rating Services raised its long-term issuer credit ratings on the company from ‘CCC’ to ‘CCC+ with a negative outlook on MTG. MTG shares surged 20.69%, or $0.36, to close at $2.10, ranked the fifth of the top stocks on Wednsday. The intraday volume was 16.34 million shares, well above the average daily trading volume of 5.92 million shares. The current market cap of MGIC Investment Corp is $424.27 million.