Stocks finished virtually unchanged in a choppy trading session. Ken Meyers has your stock market report on the Acadiana Business Index.

  • The Dow gained 7 points to 13986. The S&P 500 Index rose less than 1 point to 1512 and the NASDAQ declined 3 points to 3168. The market took a breather ahead of Thursday’s monetary policy meeting in Europe.
  • The central bank is expected to leave interest rates on hold and ECB President Draghi’s euro zone outlook will garner attention.
  • As a result of the cautious tone, sector action was mixed. Energy and technology stocks paced decliners. Marathon Oil lost nearly 1% to $34.40 after reporting a smaller-than-expected profit due to rising exploration costs. Meanwhile, Intel ($20.95) lost 0.8% and IBM ($201.02) gave up 0.5%. Industrial stocks also gave up ground led by C.H. Robinson’s retreat of 9.9% to $60.38. Gains in telecommunication and utilities helped limit losses. Verizon’s defensive characteristics pushed its shares up 0.4% to $44.75 and Spectra Energy gained 3.6% to $29.29 after topping earnings estimates. Notable profit tallies including News Corp ($28.28), Visa ($160.82) and Yelp ($5.67) are due out after the close tonight.
  • NYSE Composite volume totaled over 3.4 billion shares. The NYSE was 3-2 positive on issues and 2-1 positive on volume. On the NASDAQ, advancers beat decliners by 11-9 on issues and by 10-9 on volume.
  • In fixed-income, Treasury prices were higher as the 10-year note gained 11/32 to yield 1.96% and the 30-year bond increased 25/32 to yield 3.17%.

For the complete report, click Ken's Market Report.

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