NEW YORK, New York – U.S. stocks had a sad day Wednesday with little movement in either direction. The bears, however, in the end, got the upper hand, with most of the major indices dipping into the red.
“The market’s really been sort of ho-hum in this earnings season so far,” Sandi Bragar, Aspiriant’s chief client officer. told CNBC Wednesday
“We’ve been concerned about shrinking corporate profits and earnings going lower, and that is starting to play out certainly in companies that have reported so far, but the market hasn’t really been reacting too much to that,” Bragar said.
The Dow Jones industrials dropped 79.62 points or 0.23 percent to 33,897.01.
The Nasdaq Composite edged up 3.82 points or 0.03 percent to 12,157.23.
The Standard and Poor’s 500 inched down 0.35 of a point or 0.01 percent to 4,154.52.
On Wednesday, the world foreign exchange market saw the U.S. dollar eke out small gains. The euro saw a decline to 1.0954, a decrease of 0.15 percent.
The Japanese yen fell 0.51 percent to 134.76.
The Canadian dollar, with the USD/CAD slipped 0.50 percent to 1.3455.
On the other hand, the British pound saw a slight increase against the U.S. dollar, with the GBP/USD pair closing at 1.2439, a rise of 0.12 percent.
The Swiss franc eased 0.20 percent to 0.8977.
The Australian dollar saw a decline against the US dollar, with the AUD/USD pair closing at 0.6715, a decrease of 0.11 percent, while the New Zealand dollar also saw a slight decline of 0.04 percent to 0.6204.
The FTSE 100 in London fell by 0.13 percent on global equity markets, closing at 7,898.77. The DAX PERFORMANCE-INDEX in Frankfurt gained 0.08 percent, closing at 15,895.20. The CAC 40 in Paris also increased by 0.21 percent, closing at 7,549.44.
The ESTX 50 PR.EUR in Europe slipped by 0.01 percent, closing at 4,393.57. The Euronext 100 Index in Amsterdam fell by 0.02 percent, closing at 1,383.21, while the BEL 20 in Brussels gained 0.19 percent, closing at 3,838.40.
In Russia, the MOEX Russia Index dropped by 0.19 percent, closing at 2,222.51. The STI Index in Singapore increased by 0.44 percent, closing at 3,324.05.
In Asia, the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo decreased by 0.18 percent, closing at 28,606.76. Meanwhile, the HANG SENG INDEX in Hong Kong fell by 1.37 percent, closing at 20,367.76.
In China, the SSE Composite Index dropped by 0.68 percent, closing at 3,370.13, while the Shenzhen Index declined by 0.84 percent, closing at 11,760.27.
The KOSPI Composite Index in South Korea increased by 0.16 percent, closing at 2,575.08, while the TSEC weighted index in Taiwan fell by 0.62 percent to 15,770.47.
The S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney rose by 0.07 percent to 7,365.50. The Australian ALL ORDINARIES rose by 0.05 percent, closing at 7,561.30.
In India, the S&P BSE SENSEX fell by 0.27 percent, closing at 59,567.80.
In Indonesia, the IDX COMPOSITE rose by 0.50 percent, closing at 6,821.81, while the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI in Malaysia fell by 0.51 percent, closing at 1,425.07.
The S&P/NZX 50 INDEX in New Zealand rose by 0.28 percent to 11,917.82.