While Wall Street's main focus yesterday and today has centered on the somewhat vague sentiments of Federal Reserve officials not named Ben Bernanke, tomorrow's market will almost certainly be driven by the chairman's address to the Senate. The big issue at hand is how long quantitative easing will continue; on Tuesday, investors seemed optimistic it would continue for some time, as the S&P 500 Index (^GSPC 0.56%) rose 2 points, or 0.2%, to close at 1,669, an all-time high. Unfortunately, there were no highs, much less all-time highs, for the following three S&P stocks today.
Oftentimes, stocks can sell off for no tangible reason. GameStop's (GME 6.20%) 5.1% haircut today, on the other hand, made complete sense. Microsoft's newest console, the Xbox One, was unveiled today, and its new features deal a hard blow to GameStop's lucrative business model of reselling used games. On the new Xbox, the user will install games to the hard drive from the disk, which probably means registering a game to an account, and paying through Microsoft -- not GameStop -- to register the same game to a different account.
Best Buy (BBY -0.36%) was hit by a double-whammy on Tuesday, slipping 4.4%. The struggling consumer-electronics retailer reported $81 million in losses in the most recent quarter, a far cry from the nearly $160 million profit it racked up just a year ago. The second negative stems from the same issue affecting GameStop: Best Buy, too, is in the business of reselling used video games. In other words, it's a business staring down impending obsolescence.
Lastly, shares of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX 0.58%) lost 2.7% today. The mineral exploration company is dealing with fallout from a tragic and deadly collapse of a tunnel at a mine in Indonesia, in which 28 laborers have been confirmed dead. The location is the second-largest copper mine in the world; Freeport CEO Richard Adkerson has expressed his sympathies and has been visiting with survivors since the accident.
