Stocks End Session Mixed as Oil Prices Climb Again
Uneasy investors kept stocks mixed Thursday, taking profits as oil prices rose and Wall Street grew more anxious about the coming elections in Iraq.
The rare opportunity to lock in gains in a disappointing January was too tempting for many investors to ignore. A mix of economic data did not provide a boost to keep the markets in positive territory for a third straight session.
Investors also were concerned about oil prices, which once again pushed toward $50 a barrel ahead of this weekend’s OPEC meeting. A barrel of light crude closed at $48.84, up 6 cents, in New York trading.
“The past couple of days have seen some improvement, but it’s been very tepid, almost a stealth rally,” said Ken Tower, chief market strategist for Schwab’s CyberTrader. “With the downtrend we’ve been in this month, I don’t think anybody’s feeling any urgency to put money to work here.”
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 31.19 points, or 0.3%, to 10,467.40.
Broader stock indicators rose modestly. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 0.48 point, or 0.04%, at 1,174.55, and Nasdaq gained 1.06 points, or 0.05%, to 2,047.15.
Seven stocks dropped for every six that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. About 1.6 billion shares changed hands on the Big Board, 8.1% more than the three-month daily average.
Fifty-five companies in the S&P; 500 released financial results, marking the busiest day of fourth-quarter announcements in the current earnings-reporting season, according to Thomson First Call.
Despite generally strong earnings, however, the markets have struggled to post gains this month -- all three major indexes have risen in only seven of January’s 18 sessions.
Concerns about the economy, the Federal Reserve’s stance on interest rates and rising oil prices all have weighed heavily on the markets.
“The sentiment indicators were very strong in November and December, and people I think were just too optimistic,” said Richard Driehaus, chairman and chief executive of Driehaus Capital Management Inc. “This is a very tenuous market, and you don’t want to be too bold here.”
The Labor Department said first-time jobless claims rose by 7,000 to 325,000 last week, fewer than the 333,000 economists expected. That bolstered Wall Street’s hopes that next week’s monthly job creation report would show decent job growth.
The dollar gained against the euro after the government reported that big-ticket orders to factories shot up 10.9% last year, the best performance in a decade and a promising sign for beleaguered U.S. manufacturers that have lost 2.9 million jobs since mid-2000.
The rise in orders for all of 2004 was helped by a 0.6% gain in December, which followed a 1.8% November increase as the year ended on a strong note.
The euro fell to $1.304, down from $1.307 on Wednesday.
Treasury bonds were little changed on the economic news, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note rising to 4.21% from 4.20% on Wednesday.
In other market highlights:
* AT&T; jumped $1.15 to $19.60 on reports that the company could be acquired by SBC Communications in a deal valued at $15 billion or more. SBC lost 91 cents to $23.67 on the news.
* Dow component Verizon Communications swung to a profit in the fourth quarter after a loss a year earlier, posting a 6% gain in revenue and matching Wall Street’s profit expectations. Verizon nonetheless shed 65 cents to $35.87.
* Nokia was up 89 cents at $15.22 despite seeing its quarterly profit fall 13%. Nokia surpassed analysts’ consensus forecast by 7 cents a share.
* Franklin Resources, the biggest publicly traded U.S. mutual fund company by stock market value, rose 8 cents to $65.95. The San Mateo, Calif., company said fiscal first-quarter earnings rose 39% as assets topped $400 billion for the first time. Net income climbed to $240 million, or 92 cents a share, in the three months through December from $172.3 million, or 67 cents, a year earlier. The average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call was 85 cents a share.
* Dow component Caterpillar tumbled $4.60 to $86.52 after missing Wall Street’s forecasts by 8 cents a share in the fourth quarter, even as profit climbed 58% from the year-earlier period.
