US Market Overview July 7th 2011

  • U.S. stocks rose, posting their sixth advance in seven days, as gains in transportation and consumer-staple companies overshadowed a slowdown in service-industrygrowth and China’s interest-rate increase.
  • The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.1 percent to 1,339.22 at 4 p.m. in NewYork after earlier dropping 0.5 percent and gaining as much as 0.2 percent. The DowJones Industrial Average climbed 56.15 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,626.02.
  • “We’re beginning to put the short-term economic issues behind us,” said RobertSchaeffer, a money manager at Becker Capital Management Inc. in Portland, Oregon,which oversees about $2.5 billion. “We’re likely to get better economic data overthe next months and that will rally the stock market on an intermediate basis even ifthe long-term problems such as too much debt remain unsolved.”
  • In the U.S., the Institute for Supply Management’s index of non-manufacturingbusinesses decreased to 53.3 in June from 54.6 a month earlier. A reading above 50 signals expansion. The measure was projected to drop to 53.7, according to themedian forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.
  • Transportation shares helped erase morning losses. Union Pacific gained 0.8 percentto $106.59, while the Dow Jones Transportation Average of 20 stocks, a proxy foreconomic growth, rose 1.2 percent.
  • Other data showed employers in the U.S. announced 5.3 percent more job cuts inJune than a year earlier, according to figures from Chicago-based Challenger, Gray& Christmas Inc. The report comes two days before the Labor Department’s monthly payrolls report.
  • The second-quarter earnings season starts next week when Alcoa Inc. reports on July11, the first Dow company to release results. Earnings are forecast to grow by 13 percent, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. 
  • Stock-index futures retreated after China’s central bank said it will raise itsbenchmark deposit and lending rates by 25 basis points tomorrow. This is the thirdtime this year China has raised rates as it tries to cool the world’s fastest-growing economy after inflation accelerated to the quickest pace since 2008.
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