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Wall Street fades in choppy trade after week's wild start

Business Materials 8 February 2018 03:15 (UTC +04:00)
U.S. stocks ran out of steam on Wednesday after an early surge, in a sign that investors are still spooked by the market’s recent retreat and wary more fallout is to come
Wall Street fades in choppy trade after week's wild start

U.S. stocks ran out of steam on Wednesday after an early surge, in a sign that investors are still spooked by the market’s recent retreat and wary more fallout is to come, Reuters reported.

In an up-and-down session, the benchmark S&P 500 faded at the close after trading higher for much of the afternoon, following two days of big moves, including its largest single-day percentage loss in more than six years on Monday.

“Obviously there’s a lot of concerned and nervous people. You might have had day traders trying to get out at the end of the day. Who knows what tomorrow brings,” said Stephen Massocca, senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco.

While Wednesday’s trading lacked the wild swings of the prior two sessions, the Dow industrials moved in a roughly 500-point range, more than three times the average daily swing over the past year.

“There are going to be people that are going to be selling into any kind of strength and then you are going to have some value-conscious investors taking advantage of these multiple 100-point drops,” said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates, an investment advisory firm in Toledo, Ohio.

”Now that everybody is on edge, you’re going to see the volatility swing in both directions,” Lancz said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 19.42 points, or 0.08 percent, to 24,893.35, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 13.48 points, or 0.50 percent, to 2,681.66 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 63.90 points, or 0.9 percent, to 7,051.98.

Technology shares .SPLRCT fell 1.4 percent, with Apple (AAPL.O) down 2.1 percent, while energy .SPNY dropped 1.7 percent as oil prices slumped. Gains for the industrials .SPLRCI and financials .SPSY sectors supported the market.

After regular cash trading on Wednesday, S&P e-mini futures EScv1 fell 1 percent, suggesting the negative tone would continue on Thursday.

The S&P 500 had rebounded 1.7 percent on Tuesday, a day after its biggest drop since August 2011.

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