Wall Street seesawed between gains and losses to close the day little changed
On a day dominated by the ECB and political developments in the U.S., major equity indexes of Wall Street fluctuated to end the session not too far from their starting points.
Retailer shares drew attention during the day as they showed high volatility. After announcing that it would start selling the Kenmore product line on Amazon, Sears' shares gained more than 20% while pushing down competitors' Best Buy, Home Depot, and Lowe's shares.The S&P 500 Index closed the day virtually unchanged at 2,471.25 points after reaching an intra-day record at 2,477.62 points in the early trading hours of the session while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 30 points, or 0.13%, to finish at 21,611.78 points.
On the other hand, boosted by the solid performance of Amazon and Facebook, heavy-tech Nasdaq Composite recorded another all-time high daily close at 6,390.00 (+5 points). After the closing bell today, two more tech-giants, Microsoft and eBay, announced their earning results for the second quarter. Microsoft's EPS came in at $0.98 (Estimate $0.71) while the revenue increased to $24.7B, beating the market consensus of $24.29B. eBay's EPS matched the expectations with $0.45 while its revenue came slightly higher at $2.33B vs. $2.31B estimate. Both of these upbeat results could help the Nasdaq push higher on Friday.
Commenting on the Q2 results, "earnings are going to surprise to the upside, and so far it's been good," Brent Schutte, chief investment strategist for Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company, told Reuters.
Headlines from the U.S. session:
- Forex today: dollar drops, eur rallied on possible ECB's autumn announcements
- ECB: Changes in communication coming in Sep or Oct - BBVA
- Gold leaps to 20-day high on USD sell-off
- Mueller expands probe to Trump business transactions - Bloomberg
- US Dollar breaks below 94.00, fresh 2017 lows
- US: Conference Board Leading Economic Index increased 0.3% in May to 127
- ECB's Draghi flags QE tapering talks in autumn
- Philly Fed: Manufacturing activity grew at a slower pace in July
- US: Weekly initial claims was 233,000, a decrease of 15,000 from the previous week