Stocks Close Modestly Higher
NEW YORK (
) -- Stocks eked out gains on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of the stock market's low during the financial crisis.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
added 12 points, or 0.1%, at 10,564. The
S&P 500
closed higher by 2 points, or 0.2%, at 1140, and the
Nasdaq
improved by 8 points, or 0.4%, to 2341.
>>Top Five High-Yield Utility Stocks
The Dow had added over 50 points earlier in the session, but the broader averages pared gains in the afternoon, as commodity-related stocks pulled back. The S&P is up roughly 69% since March 9, 2009, when it hit its lowest point of the financial crisis.
One of the Dow's biggest laggards was material bellwether
Alcoa
(AA) - Get Report
, which fell 0.8%.
Home Depot
(HD) - Get Report
and
Merck
(MRK) - Get Report
also weighed on the other blue chips, losing 0.9% and 0.8%, respectively.
On the other end,
United Technologies
led advancers in rising 1.4%. Fellow blue-chip conglomerate
General Electric
(GE) - Get Report
added nearly 1.4%.
On the Nasdaq,
Cisco Systems
(CSCO) - Get Report
,
Sirius XM Radio
(SIRI) - Get Report
and
YRC Worldwide
(YRCW) - Get Report
were the
most heavily traded stocks.
Shares of
Cisco Systems finished flat at $26.13, after the company unveiled its latest router technology amid hype that it would revolutionize the Internet. The CRS-3 routers promise much faster Internet speeds.
AT&T
(T) - Get Report
, which is in trial with the router, benefited from the news and turned in one of the Dow's best performances. Shares rose 1.1%. Fellow Dow component
Verizon
(VZ) - Get Report
also gained 0.9% Tuesday.
Airline stocks showed particular strength, climbing higher alongside the broader transportation sector after
UAL
(UAUA)
said United Airlines traffic picked up in February. UAL shares rose 3.7%.
AMR
(AMR)
,
US Airways
(LCC)
and
Continental Airlines
(CAL) - Get Report
also surged 9.3%, 5.3% and 4.9%, respectively.
The NYSE Arca Airline Index jumped 2.9%. The Dow Jones Transportation Average also added 1.3%.
Elsewhere, the International Council of Shopping Centers reported growth of 2.9% in its weekly chain-store sales snapshot for the week ended March 6, compared with a previous decline of 0.8%. Redbook Research said its Johnson Redbook retail sales index rose 3.1% for the week ended March 6 from the prior month, compared with a previous uptick of 0.7%.
Lawrence Creatura, vice president and portfolio manager at Federated Clover Investment Advisors, said the weekly retail data is consistent with strength seen in last week's same-store sales figures.
"It appears that the consumer may be coming out of the fetal position after being faced with significant economic headwinds," Creatura said, adding that he believes it's reasonable to expect results in line with these recent data points when the Census Bureau releases its February retail sales report on Friday.
"The storm has passed. The survivors are still standing, dusting themselves off, and going to the mall," he said.
The Dow showed volume of nearly 220 million Tuesday, compared with an average volume of 200 million. Listed volume on the
New York Stock Exchange
was nearly 5.2 billion, with
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
,
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
,
Fannie Mae
(FNM)
and
Sprint Nextel
(S) - Get Report
among the most heavily traded.
Citigroup shares jumped 7.3% after the firm received bullish comments and a report cited strong demand for its $2 billion in trust preferred securities.
Also in the financial realm,
The Wall Street Journal
reported that
Barclays
(BCS) - Get Report
may acquire a U.S. retail operation.
The European Commission is working on a proposal for a
European monetary fund aimed at assisting financially struggling countries within the eurozone and requiring the support of all member states.
Meanwhile, Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou met with President Obama in Washington.
Northrop Grumman
(NOC) - Get Report
dropped out of the running to win a $40 billion contract to build the Air Force's next generation of aerial-refueling plans. The company complained that the contract proposal clearly favored
Boeing
(BA) - Get Report
, which is now the only company vying for the contract.
SunPower
(SPWRA)
said it is building two 1-megawatt solar power plants in the Puglia region of Italy, with completion expected in August.
The
dollar traded higher against a basket of currencies, with the dollar index up by 0.2%.
In commodities markets, crude oil for April delivery settled 38 cents lower at $81.49 a barrel.
The American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday that crude oil supplies grew well past expectations last week, rising 6.5 million barrels, according to
Bloomberg.
Analysts polled by Platts had expected a mere 2.1 million barrel increase in inventories. The news sets the stage for the government's own inventory statistics, due from the Energy Information Administration at 10:30 a.m. EST.
Elsewhere, Dow Component
Chevron
(CVX) - Get Report
announced plans to layoff 2,000 workers and sell parts of its refining operations. Shares finished 0.2% lower at $74.49.
The April
gold contract shed $1.70 to settle at $1,122.30 an ounce.
The Treasury Department auctioned off $40 billion in three-year notes in the afternoon. The sale resulted in a yield at 1.437% and brought in an above average bid-to-cover ratio of 3.13. Indirect bidders, a group that observers pinpoint because it includes overseas central bankers, bought up 51.8%.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury strengthened 6/32, weakening the yield to 3.699%.
Overseas, Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.05%, and Japan's Nikkei shed 0.2%. The FTSE in London slipped 0.08%, and the DAX in Frankfurt finished the day unchanged.
-- Written by Melinda Peer and Sung Moss in New York
.
