What happened
It was a relatively calm day for the stock market on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite all changed by less than 0.1% as of 2:55 p.m. EST. However, that's not to say that the entire market was flat. Overstock.com (OSTK 2.30%) was one particular standout, with shares up by more than 18% for the day.
So what
There are a couple of possible explanations for the move. The news item that is most likely influencing the move higher is data from salesforce.com (CRM +0.06%) that shows a 50% year-over-year increase in digital spending, which indicates that upcoming fourth-quarter results from Overstock's platform could turn out to be better than expected. Consumers spent $1.1 trillion worldwide on online shopping in the 2020 holiday shopping season, up from $723 billion in 2019.
Image source: Getty Images.
It's worth noting that other e-commerce platforms are also moving higher on the news. Wayfair (W 5.23%) was higher by 8% on the day, while Etsy (ETSY 3.63%) was up by more than 13%, just to name a couple examples.
As a secondary source for today's optimism, Overstock also announced that its preferred shares will now be available to trade by Echelon Wealth Partners' Canadian customers, using the alternative trading system powered by tZERO, a FINRA member broker-dealer owned by a subsidiary of Overstock.com.
Now what
We'll have to wait a few more weeks until we see the actual fourth-quarter numbers from Overstock and other e-commerce platforms, but the Salesforce data certainly indicates that the numbers could be quite promising.
