Stocks are moving toward another day of gains today after President Obama indicated a willingness to reach a negotiated solution on the Syria conflict. A potential conflict in Syria has had stocks on edge for the past two weeks and, as tensions die down, the market is moving slowly higher. As of 3:15 p.m. EDT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.20%) has risen 0.69%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.63%) is up 0.18%.
One of the big gainers today is Disney (DIS 1.70%), which is up 1.4%. The only news today was that the next installment of Pirates of the Caribbean will be pushed back from its summer 2015 slate, presumably for one year. Pirates is a highly valuable franchise to Disney, and the company needs some box office hits after the bomb of The Lone Ranger; but they may be on the way even without a Pirates sequel. Now that Disney owns Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, it has a stable of new movies already set for 2015, including Pixar's Inside Out, a Marvel's Avengers sequel, and the next Star Wars installment. This is just a reminder of what a media powerhouse Disney has become, and those films will continue to drive content and theme-park revenue for years to come.
Intel (INTC 0.16%) was down 0.7% today, but it may have made the biggest splash on the Dow. The chipmaker and Google (GOOGL 4.60%) announced that the latest Chromebooks portable computer will be run on Intel's Haswell processor. Toshiba and Asustek will also introduce Chrome-based computers using the chips, and HP and Acer are reportedly working on Intel-Chrome computers, as well. These are huge wins considering the fact that Intel needs to expand in mobile, and Google is the leader in that space.