Stocks Avoid Wild Move for a Change

The Economy

The Department of Commerce said wholesale inventories rose 0.4% in March, in line with the 0.5% increase that economists had been expecting. March's growth compares with an uptick of 0.6% in February.

Late Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute said crude oil inventories climbed up another 362,000 barrels last week, according to Bloomberg,. Still, that's a lighter build than forecasted, as analysts polled by Platts were expecting crude oil supplies to add 1.7 million barrels in the week ended May 7.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued a unit of Bank of New York Mellon(BK) and two of its former officers, accusing them of failing to protect clients from Bernie Madoff's investment firm because they wanted to continue collecting fees associated with the transactions, according to CNBC.

In Washington, executives from BP(BP), Transocean(RIG) and Halliburton(HAL) will discuss the Deepwater Horizon oil spill before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources even as oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico.

Exchange operators are testifying on last week's stock market plunge before a House Committee on Financial Services subcommittee. Regulators have been discussing the use of market-wide "circuit breakers" to halt the trading of individual stocks in the event of an unusually steep price change in a short time period.

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