Stock Indexes Barely Move
The traditional Santa rally on Wall Street got stuck in the chimney Friday, with major stock indexes ending little changed on the eve of the Christmas weekend.
Trading was the slowest this year for a full session as some investors started the holiday early. Just 937.5 million shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange.
“It’s not terribly surprising that we’re ending the year with a whimper,” said Robert Morris, chief investment officer at Lord Abbett & Co., which oversees $101 billion in Jersey City, N.J. “If you look at the market this year, only a couple groups really performed.”
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 6.17 points, or 0.06%, to 10,883.27.
Broader stock indicators were nearly unchanged. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.54 of a point, or 0.04%, to 1,268.66, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 2.93 points, or 0.1%, to 2,249.42.
Advancing issues led decliners by about 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange.
For the week, the Dow was up 7.68 points, or 0.07%, the S&P; rose 1.34 points, or 0.1% and Nasdaq fell 3.06 points, or 0.1%.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that sales of new single-family homes fell 11.3% last month, the biggest plunge in nearly 12 years. Analysts had been expecting a drop of about 8.7%
The report -- perhaps the strongest evidence yet that the booming housing market is starting to cool off -- sent a shudder through the home-building industry. KB Home fell $1.05 to $74.50, D.R. Horton dropped 64 cents to $36.21 and Pulte Homes lost 75 cents to $40.75.
Mortgage lender Countrywide Financial declined 32 cents to $35.25.
The housing report also sent long-term bond yields tumbling. Signs that the housing market is cooling may reinforce notions that consumer spending will slow and keep inflation in check. The booming real estate market accounted for about half of all economic growth and new jobs in the last five years, according to an Aug. 15 Merrill Lynch & Co. report.
“The market has been looking for the housing numbers to show signs of cracking,” said Jose Mazas, an interest rate strategist at BNP Paribas Securities Corp. in New York.
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note sank to 4.37% from 4.43% on Thursday. Bond yields move in the opposite direction of prices.
Crude oil futures rose 15 cents to $58.43 a barrel in New York trading.
The University of Michigan’s final index of consumer sentiment for December rose to 91.5 from November’s 81.6. The increase was the most since January 2004 and helped send a gauge of retailers up 0.7%, the biggest gain among 24 industry groups in the S&P; 500.
Department store operator Dillard’s climbed 53 cents to $24.94 and Federated Department Stores, the owner of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, gained 62 cents to $66.25.
Kohl’s rose $2.10 to $48.70 after a Credit Suisse First Boston analyst added the discount department store to CSFB’s “focus list” and wrote in a note to clients that Kohl’s was his top stock pick for 2006. He credited the company’s potential to increase sales through branding and advertising.
In other market highlights:
* Affiliated Computer Services, the world’s largest processor of student-loan payments, climbed $2.92, or 5%, to $61 on published reports that the company may be bought by a private equity group for about $8 billion.
* UPS rose 30 cents to $77.14 after a federal mediator called for an indefinite recess in contract talks between UPS and its pilots union.
* Boeing rose 17 cents to $71.49 after it said it had booked 870 net jetliner orders so far this year, which may put it on track to beat a record set in 1988. Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, which have since merged, booked 877 net orders that year.
* Natural gas prices tumbled amid forecasts for rising temperatures in the northern U.S. Anadarko Petroleum declined $1.05 to $94.65.
* Bausch & Lomb, the maker of contact lenses and eye-care products, fell $7.07, or 8.9%, to $72 for the second-biggest decline on the S&P; 500. The company will restate earnings from 2000 to 2004 and the first two quarters of 2005.
