It wasn't a "Santa Claus rally," but after five-straight sessions of losses, stocks found a little holiday cheer this Christmas Eve after a durable goods report -- a key sign of economic activity -- came in better than Wall Street's expectations.
Today's Markets
At the 1 p.m. preliminary close in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 48.99 points, or 0.58%, to 8468.48, the S&P 500 gained 4.99 points, or 0.58%, to 868.15 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 3.36 points, or 0.22%, to 1524.90. The consumer-friendly FOX 50 rose 3.34 points, or 0.50%, to 669.49.
Of the 30 members of the Dow, the biggest sector to gain today were the financials led by Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM). General Motors (GM) also rose more than 8% in trading.
Volume this Wednesday was very light, with a little less than 400 million shares traded during the shortened trading session. On normal trading days, an average of 1.4 billion shares are traded.
The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq closed early at 1 p.m. ET today. Trading will be closed on Christmas and will resume on Friday.
In the commodities markets, oil was lower by $1.26 to $37.73 a barrel. Gold gained by $11.20 to $849.30 a troy ounce.
While there was little in way of company-specific news, investors had a series of economic reports that showed some minor positive signs for the economy.
The U.S. Commerce Department said durable good orders, which are orders for expensive items meant to last more than three years, fell by 1% in November. That was much better than the decline of 3.1% expected by economists, according to Thomson Reuters.
However, orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, which are orders for business equipment and considered a good metric of the business economy, rose by 4.7% last month. Business equipment spending fell by 6.6% in October.
The labor market continued to show weakness, however. Initial jobless claims, which are people filing for unemployment benefits, rose by 30,000 to 586,000 for the week ending Dec. 20. Economists expected that initial jobless claims would rise by 4,000.
Continuing claims, which are people on unemployment benefits for more than one week, fell by 17,000 to 4.37 million people.
Company News
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange's (CME) Globex electronic trading platform was halted Wednesday morning, causing futures to partially freeze up for some time. The CMEGroup said a technical failure caused trading to stop, and they were investigating.
BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIMM) filed a lawsuit against Motorola (MOT) on Wednesday, claiming that Motorola was blocking former employees from coming to work for RIMM. The companies had an agreement not to solicit each other's employees, but that agreement expired in August.
The New York Times Company (NYT) said advertising revenue dropped by 20.9% in November compared from a year ago.
Dow member Verizon Communications (VZ) said it won a $33.2 million lawsuit related to cybersquatting. The company sued OnlineNIC saying it "unlawfully registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical to or confusingly similar to Verizon trademarks." Verizon was awarded $50,000 per name.
Data Dump
The Commerce Department said consumer spending fell by 0.6% last month -- less than the 0.7% drop that economists had expected. Incomes fell by a worse-than-expected 0.2%.
Troubled firm will sell 3 famous retail centers
November home sales tank
Global Markets Retreat Amid Economic Gloom
Markets Turn Higher as Bailout Remains Possible
