Market Recap: Oil Bounces, Facebook Instantly Happy, Groupon Hit’s New Lows

Markets closed mixed on Wall Street today: Dow +0.02%, S&P -0.01%, Nasdaq -0.18%, Oil +0.73%, Gold -0.66%.

On the commodities front, Oil (NYSE:USO) declined to $93.45 a barrel. Precious metals were mixed, with Gold (NYSE:GLD) falling to $1,602.00 an ounce while Silver (NYSE:SLV) rose 0.03% to settle at $27.79.

Here’s your Cheat Sheet to today’s top stock stories:

Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB) $1 billion acquisition of mobile photo-sharing app maker Instagram has been cleared by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading, even as the social network must wait on a decision from U.S. regulators. The British watchdog decided not to refer the deal to the U.K. Competition Commission, where it would have been subjected to a full investigation, according to the OFT.

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Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) will soon be licensing its new BlackBerry 10 operating system to other manufacturers, according to a report on Monday. The new platform is now in the final stages of testing, CEO Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg News, and RIM is considering how other companies may be able to use it in a range of products, as companies including Samsung, Nokia (NYSE:NOK), and LG have done with Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android platform.

Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ:GRPN) hit a record low on Tuesday and was the tech sector’s leader for declines. The company reported disappointing earnings results. Two brokerage firms downgraded Groupon to a “Hold,” including Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney, who wrote that “the core daily-deal business is sharply slowing.”

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Estee Lauder Cos.’ (NYSE:EL) shares rose 10 percent in afternoon trading after it saw its fiscal fourth-quarter profits increase 25 percent. For the day, the stock was tops for increases on the S&P 500 Index.

Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:KORS) reported total revenue jumped 71 percent in its fiscal first-quarter report as compared to the previous year.  The company saw growth in comparable store sales jump 38 percent in North America and 24 percent in Europe amid the euro zone’s debt crisis. The stock closed up 16.48 percent on Tuesday and year-to-date, it’s up 81 percent.

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