Stocks edge down in light trading
Stocks fell slightly Tuesday in another quiet day on Wall Street. Hesitant investors remained on the sidelines as a slow summer winds down.
Shares of the candy company Hershey plunged after it walked away from a merger proposal, and Apple slipped after being hit with a large tax bill in Europe.
Investors continue to wait to see whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this year. The next key piece of data is coming Friday: the August jobs report.
Trading was extremely light once again, with roughly 2.95 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the seventh-slowest day of the year.
Bank stocks were among the few gainers as investors continued to interpret comments from Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen and Vice Chairman Stanley Fisher at a conference in Wyoming last week as signs that the Fed is ready to raise interest rates later this year.
Banks are a major beneficiary of rising interest rates because they can charge more for loans when interest rates rise. Bank of America shares rose 2% to $16.19, Wells Fargo rose 2% to $50.62 and Morgan Stanley rose 2.5% to $32.19.
Investors are waiting to see if the Labor Department’s monthly jobs survey this week indicates whether the U.S. economy remains on solid footing. Economists expect that employers added 182,500 jobs in August and that the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.8%.
A strong jobs report would give the Federal Reserve additional ammunition to raise interest rates either at its September meeting or later this year.
In other company news, Hershey sank 11% to $99.65 after Mondelez International said it was walking away from its proposal to buy Hershey for roughly $25 billion.
United Continental rose 8.6% to $50.99 after the company announced that it was hiring a former American Airlines executive, Scott Kirby, to become president and take over day-to-day operations.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude oil fell 63 cents to $46.35 a barrel. Brent crude, used to price oil internationally, fell 89 cents to $48.37 a barrel. Heating oil fell 1.5 cents to $1.471 a gallon, wholesale gasoline fell 1.9 cents to $1.448 a gallon and natural gas fell 7 cents to $2.827 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Bond prices were mostly unchanged. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note edged up to 1.57%.
The dollar rose to 102.97 yen from 101.98 yen. The euro slipped to $1.1139 from $1.1187.
Gold fell $10.60 to $1,316.50 an ounce, silver fell 19 cents to $18.67 an ounce and copper fell less than 1 cent to $2.077 a pound.