Wall St. ends lower with oil prices, renewed Greece worries

Another wild back-and-forth day with the Dow up over 100 points as late as 3:30 p.m., then crashing in the final half hour to end just 6 points in positive territory.  What happened?  The Greek debt deal that investors had so strongly depended on fell through.  Now Greece must come up with tens of billions of euros in the coming weeks to ensure liquidity.  All eyes will be ever more intensely on the Greek banks with the consensus that there is going to be a liquidity crunch if the so-called Grexit problem does not get resolved.  The bad news hit energy hard again with crude dropping nearly 9% and once again closing below $50.  Again, volume was brisk at 7.8 billion shares.

Wall St. ends lower with oil prices, renewed Greece worries

BY CAROLINE VALETKEVITCH

DJ:      17,673.02  +6.62     NAS:      4,716.70  -11.04      S&P:       2,041.51  -8.52

NEW YORK Wed Feb 4, 2015 5:09pm EST

(Reuters) - The S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended lower on Wednesday, snapping a two-day rally as energy shares slid with oil prices and as investors' anxiety about the euro zone returned in the closing minutes of trading.

The benchmark index added to losses late in the session after the European Central Bank abruptly cancelled its acceptance of Greek bonds in return for funding. The move means the Greek central bank will have to provide its banks with tens of billions of euros of additional emergency liquidity in coming weeks.

"It's kind of reconfirming what we've thought for a while, which is that there is going to be a liquidity crunch if they don't resolve this Greek situation," said Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrera Capital Markets Inc in Boston. "They make a little bit of progress and then they kind of fall back."

Shares of the Global X FTSE Greece 20 exchange-traded fund (GREK.P) dropped 10.4 percent, with volume spiking late in the session. The euro EUR= also fell on the news, while the S&P financial index .SPSY turned lower and ended down 0.3 percent.

The Dow ended in positive territory, lifted by shares of Walt Disney (DIS.N), up 8 percent to $101.64 after quarterly profit topped analysts' expectations.

The S&P 500 energy index .SPNY was off 1.6 percent as oil prices declined after a four-day surge of nearly 20 percent. U.S. crude CLc1 sank 8.7 percent to settle at $48.45 following a new build in U.S. crude stockpiles.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 6.62 points, or 0.04 percent, to 17,673.02, theS&P 500 .SPX lost 8.52 points, or 0.42 percent, to 2,041.51 and the Nasdaq Composite.IXIC dropped 11.04 points, or 0.23 percent, to 4,716.70.

The day's dip followed a two-day gain of 2.8 percent for the S&P 500, driven largely by the rebound in energy shares.

Big biotechnology names declined. Leading them lower was Gilead Sciences (GILD.O), whose stock dropped 8.2 percent to $98.43, a day after the drugmaker said it is offering steeper-than-expected discounts on its hepatitis C drugs.

The news fueled concerns the sector would face increasing price pressure. The Nasdaq Biotech Index .NBI was down 1.8 percent. Gilead was also the biggest drag on the S&P 500and Nasdaq.

About 7.8 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 8.1 billion average for the last five sessions, according to BATS Global Markets.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,993 to 1,079, for a 1.85-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,677 issues fell and 1,054 advanced for a 1.59-to-1 ratio. The S&P 500 was posting 37 new 52-week highs and 3 lows; the Nasdaq Composite was recording 79 new highs and 34 lows.