US stocks manage to end mixed

14 Jan 2009 | 09:40 US stocks manage to end mixed

stocks at Wall Street pared most of their losses and managed to end mixed on Tuesday, 13 January, 2009. Alcoa's earning report and falling crude price led their fingerprints today on Wall Street and the indices hovered between red and green since the start of the day on Tuesday, 13 January, 2009. Alcoa kicked off the earning season after yesterday's close with worse than expected earning report. The weakness was broad based in the overall market.

After opening 27 points higher, the Dow lingered in the red for almost the entire day and was down by 75 points at one point. Nevertheless, S&P and Nasdaq managed to end in the green and Dow managed to curtail its loss.

Energy and financial shares led the gains today. Investors drew some cheer by word that the breakup of Citigroup would likely go beyond an expected joint venture with Morgan Stanley.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average ended lower by 25 points at 8,448, the Nasdaq closed higher by 8 points at 1,546 and the S&P 500 closed higher by 1.5 points at 871.8.

Sixteen out of thirty Dow stocks ended in the red today led by Bank of America and Alcoa. Five of the ten sectors ended in the green.

Today, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said that the timing and strength of the global economic recovery are highly uncertain. He also added that President-elect Obama's stimulus plan could boost economic activity, but a recovery won't stick unless other steps are taken to stabilize the financial system.

Alcoa traded as a laggard in the materials sector after the aluminum producer said it lost $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter.

GE also acted as a strong laggard among Dow components today on speculation that the company will report below than expected earnings this quarter.

In the technology sector, Microsoft provided stable support to the Nasdaq after semiconductors failed to sustain an early bounce. The bounce followed NVIDIA's move to drastically slash its revenue outlook.

On Tuesday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for February delivery closed at $37.78/barrel (higher by $0.19 or 0.5%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier during the day, prices fell to a low of $36.1 and rose to a high of $40.55. Last week, crude prices shed 12%.

On the New York Stock Exchange, 1.3 billion shares traded, with advancers outpacing decliners 8 to 7. On the Nasdaq Stock Market, 801 million shares traded and advancers ran ahead of decliners 7 to 6.

Tomorrow, economic data will be in focus, with December import/export prices and retail sales both being reported at 8:30 AM ET, followed by business inventories at 10:00 AM ET.In addition, the EIA will announce its weekly crude inventory data at 10:30 AM ET and the Fed will release its Beige Book, which is a collection of anecdotal economic information.

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