Comey relief buoys Wall Street; energy falls with crude
DJ: 21,173.69 +37.46 NAS: 6,297.38
+22.32 S&P: 2,433.14
+3.81 6/7
(Reuters) U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday despite a sharp
decline in energy shares after written testimony from former FBI director James
Comey did not add major revelations about an investigation into Russian
meddling with last year's U.S. presidential election. Comey, who was fired by Trump last month,
wrote that U.S. President Donald Trump asked him to drop an investigation of
former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
But the details of Comey's testimony, expected to be delivered Thursday
to a Senate Committee, appeared to be priced into the stock market. Investors were concerned that any additional
revelation could dampen already flagging momentum for Trump's agenda of lower
taxes and lax regulations.
Bets
that Trump can implement his agenda are partly behind a rally that has taken
stock indexes to record highs.
"They
were hoping that there wasn’t going to be anything in there that was more
inflammatory," said Peter Costa, president of trading firm Empire
Executions.
"The testimony wasn’t as
disastrous as it could have been," he said of the prepared remarks,
adding that the market was relieved no damaging details emerged and his
testimony "more than likely isn’t going to blow up into some big fiasco,
another thing that the president has to deal with."
Costa
cautioned that the market's reaction to Comey's remarks was not a particularly
big move up and volume was light.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 37.46
points, or 0.18 percent, to 21,173.69, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 3.81
points, or 0.16 percent, to 2,433.14 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 22.32
points, or 0.36 percent, to 6,297.38.
Wall
Street was weighed by a near 2-percent drop in the S&P 500's energy sector
.SPNY. All but two of the 34 components of the sector fell as U.S. crude
futures CLc1 tumbled 5 percent due to an unexpected rise in U.S. inventories.
Brent crude LCOc1 fell nearly 4 percent.
The
largest percentage gainer on the S&P 500 was Signet Jewelers (SIG.N), which rose 4
percent, while the largest decliner was Newfield Exploration (NFX.N), down 7 percent.
Investors are also keeping an eye on
Britain's general election and the European Central Bank's policy meeting, both
on Thursday.
Opinion
polls have shown Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's lead over the
opposition Labor party narrow over the last three weeks, with some even
suggesting she could fall short of a majority government. The election comes as
Britain maps its exit from the European Union following a referendum on the
subject last year.
The
ECB is expected to reiterate its plan to maintain a very accommodative monetary
policy at least until the end of the year.
Declining
issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.12-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq,
a 1.13-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.60
billion shares,
roughly in line with the average over the last 20 trading days.
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