USA stocks end higher as Greece debt talks proceed

Outside the benchmark index, Mercer Group was unchanged at 10 cents after saying annual earnings fell as much as 40 percent due to missing sales targets for its Titan 500 Slicers.

Raw-materials, banks and semiconductor shares were among the worst performers.

Banking shares were weak, including Dow member JPMorgan Chase (-0.8 percent), Citigroup (-1.1 percent) and Bank of America (-1.5 percent).

Chesapeake Energy Corp., Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. and Southwestern Energy Co. all added more than 2.4 percent.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.26 percent.

The Nasdaq composite fell 17.27 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,991.94.

The panic in mainland markets also rippled across the border, knocking Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index sank 6 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 3 percent to a seven-week low.

Stocks traded normally on the New York Stock Exchange, reported by traders, a day after the exchange was forced to halt trading for nearly four hours.

A few investors believe the storm clouds over Greece and China may give the Federal Reserve reason to hold off raising US interest rates, or at least slow the pace of their rise. Since then, global markets have been shaken by the rising risk of a Greek exit from the euro and a rout in Chinese stocks. The country has unveiled new market-boosting measures almost every night over the past 10 days as policy makers seek to maintain confidence in the nation’s leadership and prevent a crash from weighing on economic expansion.

European markets rose on hopes that Greece might be able to win a deal that could keep it in the euro zone.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras failed to present a detailed reform blueprint at a meeting of finance ministers on Tuesday.

Markets in China extended their slump.

White thinks that as quarterly earnings reports start to roll in over the coming weeks, investors will turn away from Greece to focus on the United States and its improving economy. Shares rose 3.4%. Analysts forecast that companies in the S&P 500 will report that their overall profits dropped 4 percent in the quarter, as indicated by S&P Capital IQ.

“The decline in oil ended”, said Stephen Massocca, Chief Investment Officer at Wedbush Equity Management LLC in San Francisco. “We’re going to be watching those two things really closely”. Among individual stocks, Newmont Mining dropped $1.45, or 6.1 percent, to $22.41, the biggest decline in the index. The gaugerose 20 percent last week, the most in five months.

US-listed Chinese companies fell, including e-commerce giant Alibaba (-0.8 per cent), as well as the smaller social networking platform Renren (-7.0 per cent), Qihoo 360 (-7.1 per cent) and Youku Tudou (-6.7 per cent).

Freeport-McMoran Inc. rose 2.6 percent, its first gain after a seven-session stretch in which the miner lost 17 percent. Chinese stocks have fallen more than 30 percent since mid-June.