Stocks retreat from highs
Both Hewlett-Packard halves fall after CEO Meg Whitman says she’ll retire
NEW YORK» U.S. stocks mostly slipped away from their latest record highs Wednesday as the two former halves of Hewlett-Packard tumbled, while falling interest rates helped phone companies but hurt banks.
The price of oil jumped on reports OPEC and a group of other countries might extend the cuts in production they made at the start of this year. That took energy companies higher. Hewlett Packard Enterprise sank after it said CEO Meg Whitman will retire, while printer and PC maker HP lost ground after its latest quarterly report.
Interest rates fell after the Federal Reserve released minutes from its latest meeting, which ended Nov. 1. While most officials were comfortable raising interest rates soon, as investors think they will do in December, a few Fed leaders think rates should stay where they are until there is more evidence inflation is rising.
The Fed has suggested it wants to raise rates three more times next year, but many are skeptical that it will.
“The market certainly doesn’t believe it, and hasn’t believed it all along,” says Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist for Wells Fargo Investment Institute. He said investors may change their minds as economic reports roll in over the next few weeks, and they may get nervous if they think the Fed will move faster.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index dipped 1.95 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,597.08. The Dow Jones industrial average slid 64.65 points, or 0.3 percent, to 23,526.18. The Nasdaq composite rose 4.88 points, or 0.1 percent, to a record 6,867.36. The Russell 2000 index of smallercompany stocks lost 2.13 points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,516.76.
All four indexes closed at record highs Tuesday, and on Wednesday most of the companies on the New York Stock Exchange finished higher.
U.S. markets will be closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday. They will reopen Friday but will close early.
The two main companies that once comprised Hewlett-Packard took the largest losses in the S&P 500. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which sells data-center hardware and tech gear, dropped after it announced company President Antonio Neri will replace Whitman as CEO Feb 1. Whitman became CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2011 and oversaw its split in 2015. HPE also reported mixed fourth-quarter results.
Analysts said they were surprised by the timing because Whitman suggested last month that she wasn’t leaving soon. Like several other analysts, Steven Milunovich of UBS said Neri is a good choice, but that Whitman will be hard to replace.
“Whitman’s star power could be missed when competing with the likes of Michael Dell, Chuck Robbins, and Ginni Rometty for large enterprise deals,” he said, referring to the CEOs of Dell, Cisco Systems and IBM.
HP Enterprise fell $1.02, or 7.2 percent, to $13.10. Meanwhile HP Inc., which sells PCs and printers, had a solid quarter but couldn’t sustain the gains it’s made this year. The stock lost $1.12, or 5 percent, to $21.34. It’s up 44 percent in 2017.
U.S. crude rose $1.19, or 2.1 percent, to $58.02 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, gained 75 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $63.32 a barrel in London. Both oil benchmarks are at two-year highs.