The Denver Post

Wall Street: Oil prices close higher Tuesday, gaining $1.50, or 2.6 percent.

Apple slid 2.5 percent over speculatio­n that it might cut iPhone target sales.

- By Alex Veiga

A listless day of trading on Wall Street ended with major stock indexes closing slightly lower Tuesday, weighed down by losses among some big technology companies.

Apple slid 2.5 percent amid speculatio­n that the consumer electronic­s giant might cut its targets for sales of its latest iPhone. Banks also declined, outweighin­g gains by energy companies and retailers. Oil prices closed higher.

Trading was light as investors returned from Christmas.

“It’s a low-volume day after Christmas, with hardly anything going on,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager with Globalt Investment­s. “You have one piece of news that is significan­t on a major company, Apple. That moved some of the components around.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 2.84 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,680.50. The Dow Jones industrial average slid 7.85 points, or 0.03 percent, to 24,746.21. The Nasdaq lost 23.71 points, or 0.3 percent, to 6,936.25. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks picked up 1.30 points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,544.23.

Stocks had finished higher for five straight weeks heading into this week. They are on pace to finish every month this year with gains, when dividends are included.

The major indexes were slightly lower early on and veered little for the rest of the day. It was the lightest day of trading in about a year.

Technology companies pulled the market lower from the get-go, weighed down by chipmakers and Apple, among other big names.

Apple slid after a Taiwanese newspaper reported that the company may cut iPhone X sales targets amid weak sales. The stock declined $4.44 to $170.57.

Chipmaker Micron Technology lost $1.87, or 4.2 percent, to $42.25.

Despite the slide, technology remains the best-performing sector in the S&P 500 this year with a gain of 37.4 percent.

Energy companies posted the biggest gains Tuesday as oil prices rose. Range Resources gained 53 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $16.99.

Benchmark U.S. crude gained $1.50, or 2.6 percent, to settle at $59.97 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, which is used to price internatio­nal oils, rose $1.77, or 2.7 percent, to close at $67.02 in London.

Investors also bid up shares in big retail stocks and consumer products companies. Kohl’s jumped $3.21, or 6 percent, to $56.87, while Macy’s added $1.18, or 4.6 percent, to $26.85.

Gold rose $8.70, or 0.7 percent, to $1,287.50 an ounce. Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 2.47 percent from 2.48 percent late Friday.

The price of bitcoin rose 14.4 percent to $15,917 as of 4:45 p.m. ET, according to the tracking site CoinDesk. The price of the digital currency slumped as much as 30 percent on Friday. Bitcoin futures on the Cboe Futures Exchange rose 13.3 percent to settle at $15,810.

The futures contracts allow investors to make bets on the future price of bitcoin.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States