 The Market Sum | Insight after the bell
By Caleb Silver, Editor in Chief Thursday's Headlines 1. Markets Give Up Gains as Dow Rally Halted 2. Microsoft's Mega-Buyback 3. Amazon's Plan to Cool the Planet 5. The Investopedia Robo-Advisor Awards for 2019 Markets Closed
 Markets Today
U.S. markets cooled off today as investors digested yesterday's interest rate decision from the Federal Reserve and focused on a new round of trade talks between the U.S. and China. The DJIA gave up a 100 point gain to close down around 50 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were roughly flat. The S&P 500 is only about 0.5% from a new record high as investors embrace stocks after eschewing them in August.  Now that the Fed has made its move and trade talks have commenced, it's a good time to step back from the economic arena and look at what some individual stocks and companies are doing.
They are doing a lot.
Microsoft Announces $40 Billion Buyback and Boosts Dividend
Microsoft keeps finding ways to delight its investors. The software, services, and cloud computing giant announced a big boost to its already sizable dividend and a $40 billion stock buyback program, after the close on Wednesday.
Microsoft's new dividend will be $0.51 per share. Microsoft paid its first dividend to shareholders in 2003, and it has generally bumped up its quarterly dividend every year or so. The company announced the increase of the dividend by 4 cents per share, to 46 cents, one year ago.
When it kicks in on Dec. 12 (for shareholders of record as of Nov. 21), the new dividend will be almost double what it was when CEO Satya Nadella took over from Steve Ballmer in 2014. At Microsoft's closing price of $138.52 on Wednesday, the dividend yield would be 1.47%, below the 1.93% yield for the S&P 500, according to YCharts.
As for the buyback, Microsoft has never been shy about buying its own stock when it feels it is underpriced. In the fiscal year that ended on June 30, the company bought back $19.54 billion worth of its shares. In the previous fiscal year, the buybacks came out to $10.72 billion.
A strong dividend, sales and margin growth, and an aggressive share repurchase program have helped to nearly quadruple Microsoft's share price since Nadella took the reins in February of 2014. Here's MSFT against the S&P 500 in orange and the Nasdaq 100 in light blue.  Amazon's Plan to Cool the World
If there is one company that could actually pull this off, I'd bet on Amazon.
Today, Amazon, along with an environmental group called Global Optimism, announced The Climate Pledge, a commitment to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early.
To join The Climate Pledge, companies have to agree to do the following:
Here's what Jeff Bezos had to say on the announcement:
"We're done being in the middle of the herd on this issue—we've decided to use our size and scale to make a difference. If a company with as much physical infrastructure as Amazon—which delivers more than 10 billion items a year—can meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early, then any company can."  source: Rivian.com
What is Rivian? Amazon also pledged to buy 100,000 fully electric vehicles from Rivian to add to its growing cargo business. If you don't know what Rivian is, you are about to. It's a competitor to Tesla. The privately-held maker of premium electric sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and pickup trucks has yet to sell a vehicle. But its founder, R.J. Scaringe, nonetheless, has raised $1.7 billion in funding, including $700 million from Amazon.com Inc. and $500 million from Ford Motor Co.
Amazon also announced a $100 million commitment to The Nature Conservancy as part of The Right Now Climate Fund. The company also says it plans to make all shipments net zero carbon, with 50% net zero carbon by 2030.
This is a pretty ambitious plan, given the size of Amazon's global footprint. It ships 10 billion packages a year, but it also owns the Amazon Web Services, the largest provider of cloud computing services in the world. It has been accused by environmental groups like Greenpeace for going back on its pledges to offset its electricity use or build wind farms to offset its consumption.
Still, today's pledge, which comes ahead of tomorrow's climate march in New York, is a step in the right direction.  Investopedia's Best Robo-Advisor Awards for 2019 It's a big day for us at Investopedia as we are launching our first ever Best Robo-Advisor Awards, where we review the top digital advice platforms that truly help investors manage their financial lives.
Robo-Advisors emerged on the scene a little over a decade ago in the wake of the Financial Crisis. They were designed for the digital age and help users automate their savings, spending, and investing through great technology and passive investing products like ETFs.
Our team of experts reviewed over 30 of the top robo-advisors and awarded the best overall, and the best in the following categories:
A lot of our readers ask us how to get started in investing or which platforms are best for them. Robo-Advisors are not for everyone, but if you like automating your financial life and using state-of-the-art technology in your financial life, a robo-advisor is a great place to start.
chart courtesy www.koyfin.com  Shares of Cigna increased by nearly 3% following the company's announcement that it will be expanding its healthcare exchange offerings to a total of 19 markets across 10 states by 2020. American Tower's stock price is up by over 2% today, contributing to its 5.8% rise throughout the week thus far.  Shares of Seagate Technology fell by nearly 7% due to its declining operating margin forecast signaling little operating leverage. Although it beat its Q1 earnings estimates, Darden Restaurants' stock price still decreased by just over 5% today because the company couldn't keep pace with the results it required to meet its own financial performance goals.  Word of the Day A dividend is the distribution of reward from a portion of the company's earnings and is paid to a class of its shareholders. Dividends are decided and managed by the company's board of directors, though they must be approved by the shareholders through their voting rights. Dividends can be issued as cash payments, as shares of stock, or other property, though cash dividends are the most common. Along with companies, various mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETF) also pay dividends.  (source: KFDA.com)
Today in Financial History Sept. 19, 2008: Struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the Bush administration laid out a radical bailout plan calling for a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions. Relieved investors sent stocks soaring on Wall Street and around the globe.
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Thursday, September 19, 2019
The Cool Down
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