Wall Street Ends Mixed After a Late Recovery
A late-day buying rush rescued Wall Street from a losing session Wednesday, overcoming record-high oil prices and downbeat economic news that had depressed major stock indexes for most of the day.
Blue-chip shares closed higher, but tech stocks trailed.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 31.93 points, or 0.3%, at 10,117.07, after falling as much as 91 points earlier.
The broader gauges also came back from their session lows, but were mixed at the close. The Nasdaq composite index ended down 10.84 points, or 0.6%, at 1,858.26, after dropping as much as 2%.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index finished up 0.59 point, essentially flat, at 1,095.42.
Declining issues had a slight edge over advancers on the New York Stock Exchange.
The final-hour advance came even as oil futures topped $43 a barrel, a 21-year high.
Analysts said it wasn’t clear that the market could sustain its comeback. Some of the buying was attributed to computerized program trading -- when large investment funds automatically purchase shares because they’ve fallen to a specified level.
Short-term traders also appear to be testing whether key indexes can hold at current levels, analysts said. The S&P; 500 index in recent days has rallied each time it neared the 1,084 mark, which was where it bottomed after the spring sell-off that ended in mid-May.
But the tech-dominated Nasdaq index already has fallen below its May low of 1,876.
In economic news on Wednesday, the government said that orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket items rose 0.7% in June, slightly lower than what analysts had forecast. The gain in orders for durable goods was good news after two months of declines because it raised hope that the rebound in the nation’s manufacturing sector was no longer in danger of stalling.
Investors were less than impressed, however, as the lower-than-expected gain in durable goods orders came after several other business barometers showed weakness for June.
Adding to that, oil closed up $1.06 to $42.90 a barrel in New York after Russian oil giant Yukos warned that it might have to shut down production pending the enforcement of a Moscow judge’s order.
Concerns about a softer U.S. economy have weighed most heavily on the tech sector. The Nasdaq index has slumped 9.3% this month. Semiconductor stocks have been among the hardest-hit tech issues. An index of 18 major chip stocks lost 0.9% on Wednesday and is down 17.7% this month.
“In general, the view on the street is that things are slowing down, and no one is confident about the forecasts” of the semiconductor firms, said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist at Weeden & Co.
In other markets highlights:
* U.S. Treasury yields slipped, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note falling to 4.59%, from 4.61% Tuesday. In what was widely perceived as a successful auction, the Treasury sold $24 billion in two-year notes that went at a high yield of 2.80% and drew bids for 2.36 times the amount offered, well above the 2.18 average for the year to June.
* Some semiconductor issues fell after being downgraded by brokerage J.P. Morgan. Varian Semiconductor slid $2.06 to $26.85, Teradyne fell 38 cents to $16.20 and Applied Materials sank 32 cents to $15.86.
* ChevronTexaco rose 46 cents, to $94.31. The San Ramon, Calif.-based company raised its quarterly dividend by 7 cents, to 80 cents a share, and declared a 2-for-1 stock split to shareholders of record as of Aug. 19.
* Blue Nile, an online jewelry retailer, plummeted $6.04, or 18%, to $27.25. It reported higher second-quarter operating profit but said third-quarter net income would be 5 cents to 7 cents a share, missing the 9 cents that analysts had expected.
