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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Another day, another whipsaw


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Another day, another whipsaw.


U.S. stocks emerged in positive territory on Wednesday after a remarkable retreat in afternoon trading sent major indexes down 4 per cent from their intraday highs before recovering in the final hour of trading. The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 7749.81, up 89.84 points, or 1.2 per cent. The broader S&P 500 closed at 813.88, up 7.63 points, or 1 per cent.


Both indexes began the day strongly, with investors feeling upbeat about the better-than-expected rise in new-home sales and durable goods orders for February - interpreting both moves as early signs that the deterioration in the U.S. economy could be bottoming out.


However, investors were taken aback by a disappointing Treasuries auction, which saw five-year notes sold at lower prices - or higher yields - than expected, which fed doubts about the U.S. Federal Reserve's determination to bring down borrowing costs using so-called quantitative easing.


Those concerns eased in the late afternoon, sending stocks up again but nowhere near their highs earlier in the day. U.S. home building stocks surged nearly 14 per cent in the morning, after a report showed that new-homes sales rose 4.7 per cent, month-over-month, in February even as they remained near record lows. However, the stocks surrendered most of those gains by the afternoon, ending the day up 3.1 per cent.


Among financials, Bank of America Corp. rose 6.7 per cent, despite receiving a credit downgrade on its preferred shares to junk status. JPMorgan rose 8.2 per cent but Citigroup Inc. fell 2 per cent.


In other moves, McDonald's Corp. rose 2.7 per cent and Boeing Co. rose 2.7 per cent. General Motors Corp. fell 6.6 per cent.


In Canada, the benchmark index never fully recovered from its afternoon selloff. The S&P/TSX composite index closed at 8797.44, down 51.95 points, or 0.6 per cent - down 185 points from its intraday high.


Research In Motion Ltd. fell 4.4 per cent after the BlackBerry maker was downgraded to an "underweight" recommendation by an analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co., who argued that the recession will slow subscriber growth over the next 18 months.


Financials were mixed. Manulife Financial Corp. fell 3.6 per cent and Royal Bank of Canada fell 0.8 per cent, but Toronto-Dominion Bank rose 0.3 per cent.


Energy stocks fell after the price of crude oil dipped to $52.77 (U.S.) a barrel, down $1.21. Suncor Energy Inc. fell 0.3 per cent and EnCana Corp. fell 2.5 per cent. Gold producers were strong, after the price of gold rose to $935.80 an ounce, up $12. Goldcorp Inc. rose 3.2 per cent and Barrick Gold Corp. rose 2.4 per cent.

Copyright 2001 The Globe and Mail