The market struggled again with record oil prices, leading the Dow Industrials to give back all of yesterday’s gains and then some. The Dow fell 101 points (-1.0%) to 10270. The S&P 500 also gave back most of yesterday’s advance, losing 10 points (-0.8%) to 1195, while the Nasdaq held up a little better, falling 10 points (-0.5%) to 2069. The Russell 2000 dropped 5 points (-0.8%) to 648, the Dow Transports were down 0.4% while the Utilities fell 1.8%, and bonds moved higher pushing the 10-year yield down to 4.07%.
Market internals were negative, and volume picked up slightly from yesterday. Advances trailed declines by 8 to 11 on both exchanges. Up/down volume was 5/11 on the NYSE and 6/7 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 316/28 on the NYSE and 132/27 on the Nasdaq.
Looking through the industries, there wasn’t a lot of good news. HMOs were higher by 1.6%, helped by news of UnitedHealth’s purchase of Pacificare. Other groups making gains were steel stocks (+1.2%), semiconductors (+1.1%) and gold & silver stocks (+0.9%). Paper stocks fell 1.8%, utilities fell 1.8%, and defense stocks gave up 1.3%. Many energy stocks gave back some of yesterday’s gains, with natural gas stocks down 1.4%, oil stocks down 1.3% and oil services down 1.3%.
Crude oil prices moved to record high levels on weather concerns, gaining $1.69 to $61.28/barrel. Prices for unleaded gasoline and heating oil reached record highs as well. The dollar index didn’t move much, finishing at 90.37 and the price of gold stayed near $423/ounce.