Markets Right Now: Energy stocks lead an early decline

It raises doubts about whether Italy will stay in the European Union and keep using the euro common currency.

Five of the 11 major S&P sectors were lower.

The Dow is also set to outpace the S&P 500 for the first time since 2011.

Market reaction was muted as trading began on a new cross-border stock link between Hong Kong and the neighboring Chinese city of Shenzhen, widening access to China’s markets for global investors. “This is despite the absence of the boost for oil-related equities we had experienced in the past few sessions”, Jingyi Pan, a market strategist for IG, said in a research note. USA stocks were poised for a flat open, with Dow and S&P 500 futures both steady.

It allows worldwide investors to buy and sell 880 high-growth small and midcap stocks traded on China’s smaller second exchange in Shenzhen via the Hong Kong exchange.

“Next week, the challenge will be the Fed”.

In other corporate news, Nike fell 2.8% after Cowen & Co downgraded the shoe and apparel maker’s shares to “market perform”.

Economic data: The Fed is entering its “blackout” period on Tuesday, which means there won’t be any central bank speakers ahead of the monetary-policy setting meeting on December 13-14. According to CME Group’s FedWatch Tool, the odds of a rate hike during next week’s meeting sits at 94.9%. While oil prices were solidly lower, energy companies were trading mostly flat to only slightly lower.

The final reading for headline orders for durable goods, a measure of business investment, jumped 4.6% in October from the previous month, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday.

Crude oil rally ends: Oil prices fell with the U.S. crude down more than 1 per cent to $51.26 per barrel as investors judged a 19 per cent rally since the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (Opec) agreement last Wednesday to curb production was getting stale. West Texas Intermediate was down about 2% in late trading to $50.71 a barrel, while Brent lost 2.3% to $53.69. Synchronoss shares were off about 12 per cent.

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Intralinks soared 16.2 per cent to US$13.10 after Synchronoss Technologies said it would buy the cloud-based business software provider for US$821 million, representing a 15.4 per cent premium.

A strengthening USA dollar also weighed on the S&P 500, which has a large exposure to multi-national companies with a global footprint.

AT&T shares increased by 1.9% after the firm said its new streaming television service DirectTV Now has gained more subscribers so far than expected.

-Sara Sjolin contributed to this article.