While you were sleeping: Wall St inches higher

Wednesday 7th December 2016

Wall Street eked out gains, bolstered by bank stocks, while oil prices slid for the first time since OPEC’s agreement to lower output.

In 1.24pm trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a 0.06 percent gain, while the Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.11 percent. In 1.09pm trading, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.19 percent.

The Dow moved higher as advances in shares of Verizon Communications and those of Goldman Sachs, recently up 1.3 percent each respectively, outweighed slides in shares of Nike and those of Visa, down 2.8 percent and 0.6 percent respectively.

Wells Fargo shares rose, trading 1.4 percent higher as of 1.20pm in New York. Chief Executive Officer Tim Sloan said the bank's profits were likely to be hit in the short term by higher interest rates but that longer term the hike would be beneficial, according to Reuters.

"You've got a lot of overbought individual components, especially in a rising rate environment, so any bad news, including Trump tweeting on Boeing, is going to have a big impact on the market," Phil Davis, CEO of PSW Investments, told Reuters.

Boeing shares traded 0.1 percent lower at US$152.06 as of 1.28pm in New York. Earlier the stock had dropped as low as US$150.02 after US President-elect Donald Trump called on the government to cancel an order to build new Air Force One jets.

"Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!" Trump said on Twitter.

Asked by reporters, Trump did not say why he believes the planes will cost "more than US$4 billion,” CNN reported.

"The statistics that have been cited [by Trump], shall we say, don't appear to reflect the nature of the financial arrangement between Boeing and the Department of Defense," said Obama White House spokesman Josh Earnest, according to CNN.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the day with a 1 percent rally from the previous close, bolstered by bank and utility stocks. The UK’s FTSE 100 Index increased 0.5 percent, Germany’s DAX Index rose 0.9 percent, while France’s CAC 40 Index gained 1.3 percent.

Investors are awaiting the results of European Central Bank gathering on Thursday, with bets the central bank will extend its bond-buying program.

Meanwhile, Italy’s banks might be offered a helping hand following Sunday’s referendum that prompted Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to resign.

“Optimism about banks is driving markets in Europe firmly higher, on expectations that some sort of bail-in for Italian institutions is on the cards,” Chris Beauchamp, a market analyst at IG in London, wrote in a note, according to Bloomberg. “This would provide a real boost to risk appetite.”

Oil prices fell about 2 percent, sliding for the first time since last week’s OPEC agreement to reduce production.

"Reaction to the OPEC news was overdone,” Phil Davis, managing partner at venture capital firm PSW Investments in Woodland Park, New Jersey, told Reuters. “All they did was agree to cut output that they had added recently.”

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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