Stocks in flux following French election

Yahoo Finance

Traders breathe a sigh of relief (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) as the French elections unfold as expected. And the volatility index just hit a 10-year low. Catch The Final Round at 4 p.m. with Jen Rogers and Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer.

Winners and losers

Stocks in the red today include Horizon Pharmaceuticals as guidance came in well below estimates; Stamps.com as rival Pitney Bowes debuted a cloud offering that undercuts a Stamps.com shipping product; and Tyson Foods, with the Andy Serwer favorite getting plucked as the chicken producer missed on earnings and revealed that Florida was investigating possible anti-competitive behavior.

It’s Merger Monday for stocks in the green today, starting with Kate Spade as Coach agreed to buy the goods-maker for $2.4 billion in cash; Care Capital Properties as Sabra is buying the health care REIT for $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal; and Tribune Media, with shares jumping after Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the TV station operator for about $3.9 billion, boosting the number of local TV stations Sinclair owns.

Looking ahead

  • We’re still in the thick of earnings season, with Disney, Duke Energy, and Valeant all reporting tomorrow.

  • And at 10 a.m. ET, we get another dose of jobs data with the JOLTS report for March. In the prior month we saw 5.7 million new job openings, a seven-month high.

  • Finally we have more Fed speak on tap—Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari speaks in the morning and Eric Rosengren of the Boston Fed and the Robert Kaplan of the Dallas Fed talk in the afternoon.