New York, NY, United States (AHN) – United States stocks slipped Wednesday after a successful auction of Italian debt gave European stocks a boost but failed to excite equity traders here in the states.
Just after the opening bell on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was lower by 10 points, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index fell 2 points, and the NASDAQ dropped 4 points.
With little other news for investors to trade on in an otherwise quiet day for economic news, the success of the Italian bond sale was welcome, but light volume and lack of market participants failed to give U.S. markets a lift.
Demand for Italian six-month bills increased from the previous auction. The average yield of 3.21 percent was half of the 6.504 average, a euro-era high, paid a month earlier for the same maturity.
European markets traded higher following the robust demand for the auction. The Stoxx Europe 600 was up 0.5 percent in late afternoon trading, reversing a 0.5 percent decline earlier in the day.
In commodities, gold fell $2.90 to $1,592.60 a troy ounce, and oil was up 10 cents at $101.44 a barrel.
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