Market Minute: Green Mountain Brews Up Broth; McDonald's Not-So-Dollar Menu

Green Mountain brews up something new, and McDonald's is working on big changes to its dollar menu. Those stocks and more are what's in Thursday's Market Minute.

The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI) rose 97 Wednesday, their best advance in a month. The Standard & Poor's 500 index (^GPSC) gained 13 and the Nasdaq composite index (^IXIC) rallied up 36 points.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) is diversifying. The maker of the K-cup single serving coffee packets is teaming up with Campbell Soup (CPB) to offer servings of chicken broth. This is Green Mountain's first attempt to expand beyond coffee and tea.

This might be one of those one-plus-one-equals-three stories. McDonald's (MCD) is testing new items for its dollar menu that cost up to $5. The menu includes more chicken items, as well as extra beefy patties and bacon toppings. Earlier this year, Wendy's (WEN) rebranded its 99-cent menu to include some items up to $2.

BlackBerry (BBRY) has reportedly narrowed the list of companies that it will negotiate with to buy the struggling smartphone maker. The Wall Street Journal reports the company hopes to complete the auction process within the next 60 days. It's not clear how many, if any, potential bidders might be interested. Analysts had thought that Microsoft (MSFT) might be one -- until it agreed to buy Nokia's (NOK) phone business for $7 billion earlier this week.

Fewer and fewer retailers are reporting monthly sales figures, but among those that do, August was a pretty good month. Thomson Reuters estimates same-store sales rose by more than four percent last month. Costco (COST) posted a 4 percent increase.

Truck maker Navistar (NAV) says its quarterly loss widened, as sales declined. As a result, the company announced a new round of cost cutting moves, including another 500 job cuts.

The oil company Hess (HES) has boosted its quarterly dividend to 25 cents a share. That's up 150 percent from the prior payout.

And investors in the drug development company Pozen (POZN) are feeling a bit healthier today. It signed a deal to license its acid reflux treatment to a unit of Sanofi (SNY).

-Produced by Drew Trachtenberg.

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