LargeCap Stocks to Keep an Eye on Today

Tomahawk, WI 10/13/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Specialty pet retailer PetSmart raised its third-quarter earnings guidance to 46 cents to 48 cents a share from a previous range of 41 cents to 45 cents. The company also raised full-year guidance to $2.46 to $2.52 a share from the previous range of $2.40 to $2.48 a share.

This comes after Goldman Sachs' analysts last week downgraded the stock on concerns about strained consumer spending.

Shares were plunging 19.5% to $35.46 in premarket trading Thursday as investors took profits.

The CEO of web services company AOL, Tim Armstrong has been speaking with key shareholders in the last few weeks to sell the idea of a sale to Yahoo! that could result in up to $1.5 billion of cost savings, Reuters reported.

AOL shares were rising 4.3% to $13.72. Yahoo! shares were down 0.4% to $15.70.

Senior Housing Properties Trust was tumbling 3% to $21.15 after 8 million common shares were priced at $21 a share.

Akamai Technologies shares were advancing 2.3% to $23.91 as the company was named as a potential acquisition target for Internet search giant Google. A Business Insider report shortly before the close Wednesday cited numerous unnamed sources in the advertising technology industry as saying Akamai is the name that keeps coming up while chasing a rumor that Google may be pursuing a deal.

Google is expected by analysts on Thursday to report third-quarter earnings of $8.74 a share, up from $7.64 a share a year earlier. Google shares were flat at $548.30.

Research In Motion is seeing a 'significant increase in service levels' for BlackBerry in Europe, the Middle East and Africa after outages spread across the globe this week.

Shares were falling 2.2% to $23.35.

JPMorgan's third-quarter profit declined 4% to $4.26 billion, or $1.02 a share.

Analysts were expecting earnings of 91 cents a share on revenue of $23.39 billion.

Shares were down 1.9% to $32.57.

Unionized coking coal workers in Australia have overwhelmingly rejected a labor contract proposed by mining giant BHP Billiton and are getting ready for more strikes. Shares were down 1.3% to $75.21.

Retail giant Wal-Mart will now focus its mergers and acquisition strategy on existing markets, Bloomberg reported, citing Doug McMillon, chief executive of Wal-Mart's international unit, who was speaking at an investor conference this week. Shares were down 0.8% to $54.75.

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