Apple continues with its slide for second straight day shedding more than 5%
US stocks ended with mostly higher at Wall Street on Wednesday, 11 September 2013. Stocks tilted mostly higher on Wednesday, with the Dow industrials tallying a third day of triple-digit gains, as reduced worry about Syria countered Apple's sharp drop. The key indices diverged at the open with the tech-heavy Nasdaq and S&P 500 starting in negative territory due to significant weakness in the largest tech stock. The major averages ended in mixed fashion as the Nasdaq ended little lower.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 135.54 points, or 0.9%, to 15,326.60. The Nasdaq Composite lost 4.01 points, or 0.1%, to 3,725.01. The S&P 500 index added 5.14 points, or 0.3%, to end at 1,689.13.
Consumer staples were the best performing of its 10 major industry groups. Twenty six out of thirty Dow components ended higher.
IBM paced blue-chip gains, up 2.2%, a day after agreeing to sell its customer care outsourcing business for $505 million to Synnex Corp.
Among other stocks under focus, Apple sank 5.4% after the company's overnight product refresh event in China did not reveal a deal with China Mobile as many investors had expected. But other tech names like Cisco Systems, Oracle, Google and Microsoft added between 0.5% and 1.1%.
Verizon Communications gained 0.1% after the telecommunications giant and Dow component launched the biggest corporate bond sale on record, selling as much as $49 billion in bonds to help finance its $130 billion purchase of Vodafone Group stake in Verizon Wireless.
Citigroup lost 0.7% after reports from Fox Business News indicated the bank plans to lay off 2,200 employees in its mortgage unit.
The likelihood of a U.S. military attack on the Syrian regime continues to decrease this week, which has boosted investor risk appetite worldwide. That's bullish for world stock markets and most other markets but bearish for safe-haven assets such as gold, U.S. Treasuries and German bonds. President Obama said in a speech to U.S. citizens on Tuesday night that he has asked the Congress to postpone a vote on using military force against Syria. .
On the economic front, July wholesale inventories ticked up 0.1% while the consensus expected an increase of 0.2%. Today's report follows last month's unrevised decrease of 0.2%. Separately, the weekly MBA Mortgage Index fell 13.5% to its lowest level since November 2008. Today's decline was paced by a 20.2% decrease in the refinance index.
Traders and investors are looking ahead to next week's meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee (FOMC). A slight majority of the market place believes the U.S. central bank at next week's meeting will announce it will begin to scale back, or taper its monthly bond-buying program. For the past several weeks the market place has been fixated on what the U.S. central bank will announce at the conclusion of next week's FOMC meeting.
Bullion metal prices ended in s steady mode on Wednesday, 11 September 2013 at Comex. Gold prices finished modestly lower on Wednesday, with the market on edge as efforts toward a diplomatic solution to avoid U.S. military intervention in Syria continued, and as investors looked for hints on what the U.S. Federal Reserve will say about monetary policy next week. Silver ended moderately higher.
Gold for December delivery ended lower by $0.20 (0.02%) at $1,363.8 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday. December silver rose 16 cents, or 0.7%, to $23.18 an ounce on Comex on Wednesday.
Crude-oil prices ended higher on Wednesday, 11 September 2013 at Nymex. Oil futures on Wednesday scored their first gain in three sessions, finding modest support as traders weighed progress toward avoiding a U.S. military strike on Syria. A U.S. government report showing a smaller-than-expected fall in crude supplies and a surprise increase in gasoline inventories kept a cap on oil's gains.
Crude oil for October delivery rose $0.17, or 0.2%, to settle at $107.56 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In the latest weekly inventory report, the EIA announced on Wednesday that crude stockpiles for the week ended 6 September 2013 fell by 200,000 barrels. Market was looking for a decline of 2 million barrels. Gasoline supplies rose 1.7 million barrels, contrary to expectations for a decline of 1 million barrels. Distillate stockpiles, which include heating oil, added 2.6 million barrels, while forecasts called for an increase of 800,000 barrels.
For every seven stocks falling, roughly eight gained on the New York Stock Exchange, where 657 million shares traded. Composite volume neared 3.1 billion.
Indian ADRs ended mixed on Wednesday. In the IT space, Infosys was down 1% and Wipro was up 3.7%. In the Banking space, HDFC Bank was up 0.8% and ICICI Bank was down 1.6%. In other space, Tata Motors was up down 0.6% and Dr Reddys was up 1.1%.
Tomorrow, weekly initial claims, August export prices ex-agriculture and import prices ex-oil will all be reported at 8:30 ET. In addition, the Treasury will release its August budget at 14:00 ET.
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