Twenty nine out of thirty Dow components ended higher
US stocks ended with strong gains on Monday, 02 February 2015 at Wall Street. After spending much of the trading session dipping in and out of negative territory, U.S. stocks produced a big rally into the close, ending Monday's turbulent trading with solid gains. Overall, the Monday session was fairly quiet with the market spending some time on each side of its unchanged level. Investors looked past a batch of government reports that suggested that the economy may be losing steam and focused instead on rising oil prices, which juiced shares in energy companies, and upbeat quarterly earnings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average which at session lows drop 125 points, ended the day up 196 points, or 1.1% at 17,361.04. The Nasdaq Composite also recorded solid gain, rising 41.45 points, or 0.9%, to 4,676.69, while its heaviest-weighted component Apple rose 1.3%. The S&P 500 rose 25.86 points, or 1.3% to 2,020.86.
All 10 main sectors recording gains and twenty nine out of thirty Dow components ended higher.
Exxon Mobil said its fourth-quarter earnings dropped 21%, hurt by lower commodity prices, while the biggest U.S. energy company also unveiled plans to slash its share buyback program.
Intel said it has agreed to buy Lantiq, a German maker of communications chips, but didn't disclose the terms.
For the most part, large cap tech names fared well, but Google and Facebook lost 1.0% and 1.2%, respectively.
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It's a busy week for U.S. economic data. Market showed showed little reaction to December income and consumer spending figures released Monday morning. The yellow metal didn't react much to the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index, which slowed to a weaker-than-expected January reading of 53.5% from 55.1% in December.
The big event for the week comes on Friday, with the release of nonfarm payrolls and other labor data for January. Markey forecasts payrolls to show a rise of 245,000 versus a gain of 252,000 in December.
World markets were a bit quieter Monday. European stock markets were down on lingering worries about the European Union's debt negotiations with Greece, following last week's victory that put a leftist, anti-austerity prime minister in power. The data firm Markit reported the Euro zone purchasing managers index rose to 51.0 in January from 50.6 in December. A number below 50.0 suggests contraction.
In other weekend news, China's purchasing managers index declined for the first time in nearly three years. The official China PMI came in at 49.8 in January. The HSBC China manufacturing PMI was released Monday and came in at 49.7 in January versus 49.6 in December. The PMI data falls into the camp that reckons China's central bank will further ease its monetary policy at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Crude-oil futures ended nearly 3% higher on Monday, 02 February 2015 at Nymex and briefly topped $50 a barrel, pushing back against earlier losses that stemmed from strikes at U.S. refineries and sluggish manufacturing data from China.
Light, sweet crude futures for March delivery added $1.33, or 2.8%, to settle at $49.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude traded as high at $50.56 a barrel, and as low as $46.67 a barrel. Prices lost 9% in January, down for the seventh straight month.
Gold prices saw a late upside push to finish almost unchnaged on Monday, 02 February 2015 at Comex after trading weaker most of the session. Bullish outside markets on this daya weaker U.S. dollar index and higher crude oil priceshelped to give the gold and silver buyers the late advantage. Gold futures were flat on Monday after rallying to their biggest monthly gain in three years last week but the precious metal is poised to strengthen with U.S. stocks under pressure.
Gold for April delivery on Comex settled at $1,279.20 an ounce, unchanged from Friday. March silver climbed 43 cents, or 2.6%, to $17.21 an ounce.
Treasuries registered modest losses with the 10-yr yield climbing three basis points to 1.68%.
Tomorrow, the Factory Orders report for December will be released at 10:00 ET (consensus -2.0%).
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