Trading mixed as investors weigh in on retailers

By Noel Randewich

(Reuters) - U.S. stock indexes were mixed on Wednesday as investors bought Amazon.com and dumped brick-and-mortar retailers after a disappointing full-year forecast from Macy's.

U.S. bond markets were closed for Veteran's Day, which contributed to generally directionless trading.

General Electric and Amazon gave the biggest boost to the S&P, with GE up 1.77 percent and the online retail heavyweight rising 1.93 percent.

It was the second straight day of what investors described as largely directionless trading, with the U.S. Federal Reserve widely expected to raise interest rates in December for the first time in nearly a decade.

"The market has nothing to concentrate on. That's why you're seeing narrow overall moves, even if individual stocks are doing well," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, which has about $3 billion in assets under management.

 

"Everyone is waiting around for he next major event," he said.

Energy stocks were weighed down by a more than 3 percent drop in oil prices to their lowest since mid-September on worries about growing U.S. stockpiles. [O/R]

The S&P energy sector <.SPNY> was off 2.08 percent, the steepest decline among the 10 major S&P sectors. Exxon Mobil and Chevron each dropped about 1 percent.

Retailer shares fell after Macy's said same-store sales unexpectedly fell in the third quarter and slashed its full-year sales and profit forecasts.

Macy's shares fell as much as 14.7 percent, while JC Penney dropped 2.07 percent despite a 6.4 percent increase in same-store sales.

Shares of Nordstrom , Dillard's and Kohl's dropped between 2 percent and 7 percent.

Alibaba's shares were down 2.1 percent even though the Chinese e-commerce giant said sales in its annual Singles' Day online shopping event on Wednesday hit a record $14.3 billion.

At 2:18 pm, the Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was down 0.1 percent at 17,741.24 points and the S&P 500 <.SPX> was 0.09 percent lower at 2,079.86.

The Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 0.08 percent to 5,087.09.

Apache Corp fell 7.8 percent after Anadarko Petroleum confirmed its offer to buy the company had been rejected. Anadarko was down 3.9 percent.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,663 to 1,342. On the Nasdaq, 1,621 issues fell and 1,122 advanced. The S&P 500 index showed 15 new 52-week highs and 11 new lows, while the Nasdaq posted 93 new highs and 104 new lows.

(Additional reporting by Abhiram Nandakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr and Steve Orlofsky)