Macy’s and oil weigh heavily on Wall Street – New York Report
INVESTORS sold oil companies and dumped brick-and-mortar retailers yesterday after a disappointing full-year forecast from Macy’s pulling US stocks lower.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 56.52 points, or 0.32 per cent, to 17,701.69, the S&P 500 lost 6.77 points, or 0.33 per cent, to 2,074.95 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 16.22 points, or 0.32 per cent, to 5,067.02.
The S&P energy sector lost 1.91 per cent, the steepest decline among the 10 major S&P sectors. Exxon Mobil slipped 0.89 per cent and weighed most on the S&P along with Apple, down 0.56 per cent.
General Electric and Amazon gave the biggest boost to the index, with GE up 1.83 per cent and the online retail heavyweight rising 2.06 per cent.
Retailers sank after Macy’s said same-store sales unexpectedly fell in the third quarter and slashed its sales and profit forecasts for the holiday quarter ending in January.
Macy’s shares plummeted 13.99 per cent, while JC Penney dropped 1.84 per cent despite a 6.4 per cent rise in same-store sales. Shares of Nordstrom, Dillard’s and Kohl’s dropped between three per cent and nine per cent.
Alibaba’s shares lost 1.94 per cent even though the Chinese e-commerce giant said sales in its annual Singles’ Day online shopping event yesterday hit a record $14.3bn (£9.4bn).
It was the second straight day of what investors described as largely directionless trading, with the US Federal Reserve widely expected to raise interest rates in December.
“The market has internalised the fact that there is going to be a rate increase,” said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York