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US market indices go down

30 July 2009 08:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev - APA-Economics. he stock market is holding up, just not pressing ahead as the economic signs look a little less promising.
Stocks had their fourth straight day of incremental moves as commodity prices slid and orders for big-ticket manufactured goods fell, injecting more economic uncertainty into the market.
Investors are uneasy but aren’t giving up on stocks. The Dow Jones industrials lost only 26 points on Wednesday and major indexes are still up about 11 percent since only mid-July. Analysts say the market’s buoyancy after such a big gain is a welcome sign of stability, but also that more good news is needed for stocks to resume their climb.
According to preliminary calculations, the Dow fell 26.00, or 0.3 percent, to 9,070.72. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 4.47, or 0.5 percent, to 975.15, while the Nasdaq composite index slid 7.75, or 0.4 percent, to 1,967.76.
On Tuesday, stocks finished mixed after several corporate earnings reports and the Conference Board’s reading on consumer confidence fell short of expectations.
Energy and materials stocks fell after a drop in stocks in China. The main Shanghai index tumbled 5 percent on fears that China would try to keep its economy from heating up too quickly. A slowdown in China’s economy would erode demand for a range of raw materials, including oil and metals.
Investors were also unnerved after U.S. crude inventories rose more than expected last week. The rise prompted worries that weakness in the economy was curbing demand for energy.
Occidental Petroleum Corp. fell $2.21, or 3.1 percent, to $69.48, while Schlumberger Ltd. fell $2.11, or 3.9 percent, to $52.49.
Light, sweet crude slid $3.88 to settle at $63.35 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Bond prices were mixed after a disappointing auction of $39 billion in five-year notes. That raised fears that Washington will have to offer investors higher returns on debt, which can drive up borrowing costs on consumer loans like mortgages. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, which moves opposite its price, fell to 3.67 percent from 3.69 percent late Tuesday.
Investors took some comfort from a Federal Reserve report said that the economy is beginning to show signs of stabilizing in some parts of the country, bolstering hopes of a broader-based recovery this year.
The central bank’s snapshot of economic conditions found that most of the Fed’s 12 regions indicated either that the recession was easing or that economic activity had "begun to stabilize, albeit at a low level."
Investors have grown cautious after the surge that began July 13 when corporate earnings reports were stronger than expected.
Russell Croft, portfolio manager at Croft Leominster Investment Management in Baltimore, cautioned against reading too much into any one economic report.
"There’s a good economic number and then there’s a bad number and that’s probably what you’d expect at this juncture of the recession," he said. "Hopefully it’s two steps back and three steps forward."
Two stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 1.3 billion shares compared with 1.2 billion traded Tuesday.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 3.57, or 0.7 percent, to 548.38.
The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.
Overseas, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.4 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 1.9 percent, and France’s CAC-40 advanced 1 percent. Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 0.3 percent.