Market Minute: Foursquare Checks In with Investors; GE to Cut Credit Card Biz

Foursquare locates some big investors, and GE looks to return to its roots. Those stocks and more are what's in Friday's Market Minute.

The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI) rose 16 points Thursday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index (^GPSC) added 3 and the Nasdaq composite index (^IXIC) gained 27 points.

Trading volume is likely to be light ahead of three-day holiday weekend. The market is closed Monday for Labor Day.

General Electric (GE) is reportedly preparing to spin off its huge credit-card business. The Wall Street Journal says the unit provides store-branded cards for 55 million customers of Walmart (WMT) and other stores. It earned $2.2 billion last year, but GE has been reducing the size of its financial business to put more emphasis on its industrial products.

Microsoft (MSFT) is reportedly in talks to acquire a significant role in the social-media company Foursquare. According to Bloomberg, Foursquare is also in talks with other companies. For the uninitiated, Foursquare is a location-based app for mobile users to earn points from certain stores and other businesses.

Energy producer Apache (APA) has agreed to sell a third of its oil and gas business in Egypt to China's state-owned oil company. The deal is valued at more than $3 billion.

A federal judge Friday considers when to begin the anti-trust trial that could determine if the Justice Department can block the planned merger between American Airlines and US Airways Group (LCC). American wants that case to begin in November, while the government wants to wait until next March. It's important because a big delay could prevent American from exiting bankruptcy.

Shares of Krispy Kreme (KKD) are becoming deglazed. The doughnut company posted weaker-than-expected earnings and issued a disappointing forecast for the rest of the year.

But two software companies, Splunk (SPLK) and Salesforce.com (CRM), are set to rally on upbeat outlooks.

And the outlook for Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL) and the rest of the struggling PC industry is even worse than previously thought. The research firm IDC again lowered its global sales forecast for the year.

-Produced by Drew Trachtenberg.

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