Another day of losses for US stocks at Wall Street

Alcoa's earnings top Wall Street's estimates

US stocks ended with losses on Tuesday, 08 July 2014. Today's session resembled yesterday's affair as stocks began the trading day on a cautious note amid weakness in European equities. Yesterday, a disappointing Industrial Production report from Germany contributed to the cautious posture, while today's losses followed the largest monthly decline in UK's Industrial Production (-0.7%) since January 2013.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 117.59 points, or 0.7%, to 16,906.62, while the S&P 500 shed 13.94 points, or 0.7%, to 1,963.71. The Nasdaq Composite lost 60.07 points, or 1.35%, to 4,391.46.

It has been a quieter trading affair in many markets early this week, amid a lack of major world economic news released so far. The focal point for U.S. traders this week is the FOMC meeting minutes from the Federal Reserve that are due out on Wednesday afternoon.

 

Traders and investors are keeping a closer eye on the Middle East, as Israel has launched a military offensive on the Gaza strip. The Hamas group has retaliated with its own rocket launches into Israel.

Economic data at Wall Street was limited to the Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey and the Consumer Credit report. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for May indicated job openings increased to 4.635 million from 4.464 million consumer credit increased by $19.60 billion in May after increasing a downwardly revised $26.10 billion (from $21.80 billion) in April. The consensus expected consumer credit to increase by $16.10 billion.

The technology sector resisted some of the selling pressure yesterday, but the top-weighted S&P 500 sector ended lower today. The influential sector suffered from losses among components of all sizes, including a 0.6% drop in the shares of Apple. Social media names slumped notably with the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter posting losses between 3.9% and 7.0%.

The latest earnings season received its unofficial kickoff after the market's close, as Alcoa Inc. released its second-quarter results. Alcoa reported adjusted per-share earnings of 18 cents on revenue of $5.84, topping Wall Street's estimates. Shares rose 1.5% in after-hours trading.

Gold prices fell a third consecutive session on Tuesday, 08 July 2014 to their lowest settlement in more than two weeks.

Gold for August delivery shed 50 cents to settle at $1,316.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices had already tallied a loss of nearly $14 an ounce, or 1.1%, over the past two trading sessions. September silver ended nearly flat $21.01 an ounce following a loss of 1.4% in the past two sessions.

Crude prices ended lower at Nymex on Tuesday, 08 July 2014. The expected and long-delayed return of two Libyan oil ports maintained pressure on oil prices. Oil futures traded mostly lower with Libya expected to soon ramp up oil exports and no sign of production disruptions in Iraq.

August crude fell 18 cents, or 0.2%, to $103.35 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The U.S. market awaits the usual weekly reports on petroleum supplies early Wednesday from the Energy Information Administration. Market is looking for a decline of 3 million barrels in crude supplies, a fall of 1 million barrels in gasoline stockpiles and an increase of 1.2 million barrels for distillates, which include heating oil.

Participation was a bit below average with just under 670 million shares changing hands at the NYSE.

Tomorrow, the weekly MBA Mortgage Index will be released at 7:00 ET, while the minutes from the June FOMC meeting will cross the wires at 14:00 ET.

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