S&P 500 Gains To Record as Treasuries Fall; Crude Slips. U.S. stocks surged, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing at records, as unemployment claims surprisingly drop and measures of consumer confidence topped forecasts. Treasuries move lower while crude oil plunged down as a report showed U.S. supplies leaped. The S&P 500 recorded a 0.3 percent increase to 1,807.23 by 4:35 p.m. in New York and the Dow soared 0.2 percent. The Nasdaq Composite Index extended advances beyond the 4,000 level to the topmost close in 13 years. Treasuries backed down for the first time in five days after a seven-year note sale attracted the least demand since 2009. Oil backslide to an almost six-month low as U.S. inventories spiked up a 10th week. European stocks jumped while the yen slouched a fifth day against the euro to a four-year low. Fewer Americans than projected filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, while the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment advanced. A measure of German consumer confidence from Nuremberg-based GfK AG soared to the topmost mark since August 2007. Chancellor Angela Merkel reached a coalition agreement with the Social Democrats, more than two months after the German leader’s Christian Democratic Union won national elections. Today’s data “is in some sense a re-affirmation that things are going along pretty decently,” Bill Schultz, the chief investment officer at McQueen Ball & Associates in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he oversees about $1.1 billion, said by phone. “Are we going to get higher rates again? Is tapering still out there? The market is playing with what’s going to come next and how we position going forward given a number of uncertainty still sitting out there.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 06:39:09 +0000
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