While you were sleeping: Mixed mood on Wall St

Thursday 14th September 2017

Wall Street was mixed, with the S&P 500 touching a fresh record high, as gains in shares of Chevron, following oil prices higher, offset declines in shares of Apple as investors digested the impact of its latest products, unveiled on Tuesday.

In 3.09pm trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1 percent. However, the Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.04 percent. In 2.54pm trading, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was little changed.

Earlier in the day the S&P 500 touched a fresh record high of 2,497.22.

A Labour Department report showed its producer price index for final demand rose 0.2 percent in August, following a 0.1 percent decline in July.

Investors will eye next week's meeting by Federal Reserve policy makers, ending on Wednesday, for clues about the central bank’s plans for a third interest rate hike this year as well as for the unwinding of its balance sheet.

“Central banks will tread carefully and the direct impact of global tapering on the real economy will likely be modest,” Citigroup economists led by Ebrahim Rahbari wrote in a report, Bloomberg reported. “But there is a material risk in our view that major asset price corrections could be triggered by this global tapering.”

The Dow gained as advances in shares of Chevron and those of DowDuPont, recently up 1.5 percent and 1.2 percent respectively, outweighed declines in shares of Apple and those of Caterpillar, recently down 1.2 percent each.

Shares of Nordstrom climbed, up 5.6 percent as of 3.04pm in New York, after CNBC reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the company’s family members are close to choosing private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners to help fund a buyout.

Leonard Green would provide the Nordstrom family members with about US$1 billion in equity to help fund the deal, the sources said, CNBC reported.

Shares of Fort Myers, Florida-based Alico dropped, trading 5.1 percent weaker as of 2pm in New York. The largest US citrus producer said there appears to be significant loss of fruit following Hurricane Irma.

“There appears to be significant drop of fruit that has fallen from the trees, but the magnitude of this drop needs to be formally calculated by our staff and our insurance companies over the next few weeks,” Alico said in a statement.

The storm that ravaged the state over the past week may have stripped off half the fruit on Florida's trees, Bloomberg reported, citing the state's biggest citrus-growers organisation, further reducing a harvest that was expected to be the smallest in 50 years.

"The damage probably was worse than expected—more extensive,” Donald Selkin. the New York-based market strategist at Newbridge Securities, told Bloomberg. "It may last into future crops."

In Europe the Stoxx 600 Index ended the day steady from the previous close. Germany’s DAX Index added 0.2 percent, while France’s CAC 40 Index also gained 0.2 percent.

The UK’s FTSE 100 Index fell 0.3 percent.

(BusinessDesk)

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