Greek talks send stocks bobbing, weaving

NEW YORK — New twists in the Greek debt crisis led to a choppy day of trading on Tuesday, as a late turn left the stock market with a modest gain.

Greece and its creditors held talks in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss how to keep it from falling out of the euro. Reports late in the day said European officials considered providing Greece with emergency funding to help it avoid defaulting on its debts. Greece has little time left before its banks run out of cash.

“It’s all Greece all the time,” said Burt White, chief investment officer at LPL Financial.

Jumping back in

Major indexes drifted lower in early trading, then dropped further around midday, pushing the Standard & Poor’s 500 index below a technical level watched by many traders, the index’s average over the past 200 days. To many in the market it was a signal that stocks had fallen too far, so they jumped back in.

“These technical factors played a role today,” said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. “The other factor was that some of the language coming from European creditors suggested that, despite the differences, there appears to be strong political motivation to hammer out some sort of agreement with Greece.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 12.58 points to 2,081.34. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 93.33 to 17,776.91. The Nasdaq composite inched up 5.52 points to 4,997.46.

Major indexes in Europe finished broadly lower.

The gains in the U.S. were led by utilities and makers of consumer staples, safe-play sectors investors tend to favor when they fear market swings.

China’s slump persists

Markets in China extended their slump. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.3 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1 percent. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.3 percent. Seoul’s Kospi lost 0.7 percent.

China’s stock market has lost nearly 30 percent after hitting a peak in June. The government has responded with a slew of new emergency measures, but analysts argue that they can’t keep prices up without some improvement in economic growth.