TradingMarkets 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Wednesday

Stocks rallied off their midday lows to finish modestly higher on Wednesday. The Dow closed up 32.25. The Nasdaq Composite ended higher by 11.99. And the S&P 500 finished the day ahead 4.91.

Here are 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Wednesday

PetSmart (PETM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) the recession-beater? Positive remarks about the pet store's ability to withstand a slowing economy encouraged traders to bid the stock higher by more than 6%.

Concerns about the effect of a slowing economy on aluminum demand led Credit Suisse to lower quarterly profit estimates for Alcoa (AA | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating). The stock was among the leaders to the downside in the Dow.

A Minnesota judge ruled that Wal-Mart (WMT | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) violated state employment law with regard to overtime, breaks. The plantiffs were awarded more than $6 million in compensatory damages.

An analyst upgrade to "outperform" boosted shares of Celgene (CELG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) by more than 8% on Tuesday.

Starbucks (SBUX | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) announced plans to close 600 "underperforming" stores between now and the middle of fiscal 2009.

Lower trading volumes were blamed by traders selling shares of CME Group (CME | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating), which were down more than 6% on the day.

Better than expected June sales led traders to bid shares of General Motors (GM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) higher on Tuesday. GM June sales were down 8% rather than the 21%
analysts had expected.

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