Wall St. slips after rally as dollar swings

Investors took a breather today with just modest swings back and forth after the big gains last week following the Fed's welcome announcement concerning interest rates.  Worries over the continuing oversupply of crude brought the Dow down just  11 points, which means everyone is just consolidating now and considering the next move.  As today's expert said - the focus now is on earnings and how they may be adversely impacted by the strong dollar.  Q1 reports start coming in about two weeks.  This is an old song that has repeated itself the last few quarters.  Everyone's expecting poor Q1 earnings so there will likely be a selloff until this is proven otherwise, as it has been consistently for the last few quarters.  Of course, the harsh winter has already been a harbinger of poor Q1 earnings so the market is expecting it on that basis alone, strong dollar or not.  With everyone in wait-and-see mode, volume was very light at 5.4 billion.

Wall St. slips after rally as dollar swings

BY CHUCK MIKOLAJCZAK

DJ:          18,116.04  -11.61               NAS:      5,010.97  -15.45 S&P:      2,104.42  -3.68

NEW YORK Mon Mar 23, 2015 4:33pm EDT

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks edged lower on Monday on the heels of strong gains in the prior week, as investors weighed fluctuations in the dollar and its impact on other markets, including crude prices.

Equity markets fluctuated between modest gains and slight losses, tracking the movement of energy stocks as crude oil prices were caught between the weakness in the U.S. dollar and concerns about oversupply. The S&P 500 energy sector .SPNY was up 0.2 percent after earlier gaining as much as 0.9 percent.

The action in the dollar has closely affected stocks of late as traders anticipate monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve sometime later this year. The 20-day correlation between the dollar index .DXY and the S&P 500 sits at -0.79. The dollar index was down 0.9 percent on the day.

"People are now way too focused on earnings, which start in a week or two, and what the impact of the stronger dollar will be and until that happens it is going to hold the market in check," said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O’Neil Securities in New York.

While the dollar's rise has been beneficial for consumers, its rapid strengthening has been a problem for a large portion of the market, such as commodities firms and exporters.

"People are prepared for the strength of the dollar to hurt earnings, but by how much they don’t know yet," said Polcari.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 11.61 points, or 0.06 percent, to 18,116.04, theS&P 500 .SPX lost 3.68 points, or 0.17 percent, to 2,104.42 and the Nasdaq Composite.IXIC dropped 15.44 points, or 0.31 percent, to 5,010.97.

The Nasdaq snapped a five-session winning streak but remains less than 1 percent from a closing record set on March 10, 2000.

In a choppy session, Brent LCOc1 settled up 1.1 percent at $55.92 a barrel, while U.S. crude CLc1 settled up 1.9 percent at $47.45. The decline in the dollar outweighed oversupply concerns after top exporter Saudi Arabia said it would only mull cutting output if producers outside OPEC do so as well.

Kansas City Southern (KSU.N) shares dropped 8 percent to $106.48 as the worst performer on the S&P 500 after the railroad cut its full year revenue forecast.

The Nasdaq Biotech index .NBI fell for the first time in nine sessions, down 2.2 percent, after running up nearly 20 percent from its February low.

Volume was light, with about 5.42 billion shares traded on U.S. exchanges, below the 6.86 billion average so far this month, according to BATS Global Markets.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,764 to 1,266, for a 1.39-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,472 issues rose and 1,287 fell for a 1.14-to-1 ratio favoring advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 62 new 52-week highs and 1 new low; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 153 new highs and 34 new lows.