What Happened in the Stock Market Today

Stocks posted solid gains on Monday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.42%) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.00%) indexes each added nearly 0.5%.

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Today's stock market

Data source: Yahoo! Finance.

Gold-focused exchange-traded funds saw heavy trading as improving manufacturing output data put pressure on prices for the precious metal. Both the Direxion Daily Gold Miners (NUGT -2.85%) and VanEck Vectors Gold Miners (GDX -1.01%) funds fell sharply as gold ticked down on rising expectations for another interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve.

As for individual stocks, T-Mobile (TMUS -0.09%) and Restaurant Brands (QSR 0.11%) stood out with big price moves on Monday.

T-Mobile adds subscribers

T-Mobile shares rose 10% after the wireless company posted surprisingly strong subscriber growth. It added 2 million net new customers in the third quarter (up from 1.9 million in the prior quarter), which helped push revenue higher by 18% to $9.2 billion. By management's estimate, that marked T-Mobile's 10th straight quarter of industry-leading sales growth and the 14th consecutive quarter of market share gains. CEO John Legere credited a new unlimited data plan and new phone releases for boosting the customer acquisition numbers. It also helped that T-Mobile's cancellation rate ticked down to 1.3% from 1.4%.

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The carrier spent $1.2 billion on capital expenses, mostly on the buildout of its 4G LTE network -- up from $1.1 billion last year. Yet the extra investments appear to be paying off by delivering higher customer satisfaction, which is reflected in the unusually strong subscriber metrics. "We took share and grew our customer base while producing both financial growth and shareholder value," Legere said in a press release.

T-Mobile raised its full-year growth outlook to 3.8 million net additions from the prior target of 3.6 million. Management also boosted its 2016 adjusted earnings guidance to $10.3 billion, up from $10 billion. Wall Street struggled to reset its expectations against the company's improving business outlook, and so the stock jumped on over five times its normal trading volume on Monday.

Restaurant Brands loses market share

Restaurant Brands, the company that owns fast food giants Burger King and Tim Hortons, fell 5% following a mixed quarterly report. Comparable-store sales growth slowed at its Tim Hortons segment, declining to a 2% pace from 3% in the prior quarter. Burger King comps, on the other hand, improved to a 2% increase from 1%. Still, both metrics trailed larger rival McDonald's, which last week announced a 4% global uptick in comps. Restaurant Brands executives blamed weak selling conditions in the fast food industry that were only partially offset by innovative menu launches like new Chicken Fries.

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Unlike McDonald's, though, Restaurant Brands is aggressively expanding the store count of its fast-food chains. Tim Hortons added 28 locations to end at just under 4,500 stores. And Burger King tacked on 143 more restaurants to bring its total to 15,243 around the world.

"We ended the second quarter with solid sales growth at both of our iconic brands," CEO Daniel Schwartz said in a press release, "driven by growth in our global restaurant footprint and compelling product launches."

The company's franchisee-heavy model continued to produce rising profits and steady cash flow, with adjusted per-share earnings spiking 38% and operating cash holding at above $900 million. These gains helped relieve the debt load -- but only slightly. Restaurant Brands' leverage ticked down to 4.2 times adjusted earnings from 4.5 times last quarter. Its $9 billion of loans is a heavy burden at almost seven times the cash it has on hand.