Gloomy data drags Wall Street down
US stocks fell yesterday after a key index of business activity in the American Midwest region showed a surprising contraction, but buying of technology bellwethers like Cisco Systems at the end of a strong quarter limited losses.
The top drags on the session were some of the quarter’s best performers including industrials, materials and banks.
The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago’s business barometer unexpectedly fell to 46.1 in September, a level that indicates contraction in the regional economy.
Typical of quarter-end action, trading was choppy and volume light.
The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 29.92 points, or 0.31 per cent, to 9,712.28. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 3.53 points, or 0.33 per cent, to 1,057.08. The Nasdaq Composite index shed 1.62 points, or 0.08 per cent, to 2,122.42.
Even so the Dow — up 15 per cent this quarter — marked its best quarterly performance since the fourth quarter of 1998, while the S&P 500 notched its second straight quarterly advance of 15 per cent. The Nasdaq gained 15.7 per cent for the third quarter.
For the month, the Dow rose 2.3 percent, the S&P 500 added 3.6 per cent and the Nasdaq climbed 5.6 per cent. These monthly gains ran counter to the historic trends showing September to be a miserable month for US stock market.
After a weak open, the indexes briefly turned positive by mid-afternoon, thanks to gains in the shares of such tech bellwethers as Cisco Systems and International Business Machines (IBM).
Cisco shares rose 1.03 per cent to $23.54 on Nasdaq, while IBM shares climbed 0.7 per cent to $119.61. The semiconductor index gained 0.9 per cent.
“When you look across the 10 (S&P 500’s industry) sectors, technology is one sector where there’s actually some top-line growth,” said Fitzpatrick.
But JPMorgan declined 2.4 per cent to $43.82, putting the stock among the Dow’s worst performers, along with Boeing, down almost 1 per cent to $54.15 and United Technologies, off 0.6 per cent at $60.93.