Market closes week down a little
The U.S. stock market capped a week of mostly light trading Thursday with its first weekly loss since mid-February.
A slide in banks and other financial services companies pulled the market broadly lower for much of the day. By late afternoon, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite recaptured losses from earlier in the day. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a broad measure of the stock market, stayed in the red. Oil prices fell.
The Dow rose 13.14 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,515.73. The S&P 500 index slipped 0.77 points, or 0.04 percent, to 2,035.94. The Nasdaq added 4.64 points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,773.50.
Trading was relatively quiet ahead of the Easter holiday weekend. U.S. markets will be closed today for Good Friday.
“Volume is very light today, probably the lightest that we’ve had in a month,” said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. “That can skew markets in either direction.”
Coming into this week the stock market had mounted a five-week string of gains that helped reverse some of Wall Street’s hefty losses from the market’s stumbling start to 2016.
The market’s rebound gained momentum last week, when the Federal Reserve announced that it would slow the pace of interest rate increases this year, citing worries about the global economy.
But this week, some Fed bank presidents made public comments that suggested the pace of rate increases might not be slowed after all.
One Fed official, James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, pointed to a broadly unchanged economic outlook and said a case could be made for a possible rate change next month if the next round of jobs data exceed official targets.
The remarks drove up the value of the dollar against other major currencies, pushing down commodity prices.
A government report indicating that orders to U.S. factories for long-lasting manufactured goods fell 2.8 percent in February didn’t help.
Financial stocks took the biggest hit. The sector pared some of its early losses, but still ended the day down the most among the S&P 500 index’s 10 sectors, 0.7 percent.
Prudential Financial lost $2.07, or 2.8 percent, to $70.76, while Morgan Stanley shed 34 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $24.93. Wells Fargo fell 86 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $48.90.
The decline in commodities also hurt some energy companies, including Williams Cos. The natural gas producer fell the most among stocks in the S&P 500 index, tumbling 91 cents, or 5.6 percent, to $15.35.
Shares of Office Depot and Staples rose on mounting optimism that a court will allow the office supply competitors to combine even though regulators oppose the deal. Office Depot gained 57 cents, or 9 percent, to $6.91. Staples climbed 71 cents, or 7 percent, to $10.76.
After a period of sustained gains, oil prices closed lower again as concerns over excess supplies returned following the latest U.S. stockpiles data. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 33 cents, or 0.8 percent, to close at $39.46 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the benchmark for international oils, slipped 3 cents to $40.44 a barrel in London.
Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.90 percent from 1.88 percent late Wednesday.