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US stocks edge lower in early trade as Greece talks proceed : Business
The Nasdaq composite declined 72 points, or 1.5 percent, to 4,919.
The S&P 500 lost 2 points, or 0.1%, to 2066.
Consumer products stocks jumped, with Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive gaining 2.1 percent and Kimberly-Clark rising 2.0 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down 36 points, or 0.2 percent, to 17,649 as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time.
“People are getting pretty nervous now”, said Ross Yarrow, director of US equities at Robert W. Baird & Co.in London.
“It’s important for investors to separate the stock market volatility and economic slowdown in China”, said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York. “China has the potential to have a material effect on global fundamentals”.
ASIA’S DAY: Markets in China extended a recent slump.
The S&P 500 rose on Wednesday as speculation grew that any contagion from failure to agree on Greece’s debt bailout terms would be limited.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Greece would bring a proposal for a cash-for-reforms deal to an emergency summit of euro zone leaders on Tuesday, a Greek official said.
Considerable weakness also remains visible among semiconductor stocks, as reflected by the 2.7% loss being posted by the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index.
Materials stocks fell more than the rest of the market as prices for metals and other commodities dropped. Britain’s FTSE 100 dropped 0.3 percent. The NYSE Arca Steel Index is down by 3%, on pace to set a new six-year closing low.
Weighing further on investor sentiment, Chinese brokerages and fund managers vowed to buy massive amounts of stocks as Beijing unleashed an unprecedented series of support measures to stem a decline of almost 30% in the main Shanghai index over the past three weeks. “But (they) run the risk that this will entail so many impediments to free trade that index providers and foreign investors will be discouraged from entering the market for a long time”. Results from Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. are all due next week. Quarterly profits for S&P 500 companies are forecast to decline 4.5% for the quarter, according to FactSet.
Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.22 percent.
Wall Street maintained its losses after the discharge of minutes of a June Federal Reserve coverage assembly through which officers cited Greece’s debt disaster as a critical concern and stated they wanted to see extra indicators of a strengthening U.S. financial system earlier than elevating rates of interest.
Tesla Motors fell 4.82 percent to $254.96 after Pacific Crest downgraded the stock to “sector weight” from “overweight”, the second rating cut in two days.
ENERGY: Benchmark USA crude was down 24 cents to $52.09 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 68 cents to close at $51.65 a barrel on Wednesday.
In commodity markets, gold futures added 0.2% to $1154.90 an ounce.
