US markets drop

Indices witness a lackluster day with no major catalyst

Stocks at Wall Street managed to somewhat steady during the day on Tuesday, 24 March, 2009 but ended in the red ultimately. After yesterday's huge rally, there was as such no market moving news or event today. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Geithner endured a question and answer session at a House Financial Services Committee meeting regarding the rescue of AIG. There was single economic report scheduled today pertaining to the housing sector.

Stocks started the day in the red and ended with modest losses. For a very brief period, Dow had inched up to the green.

After starting the day 86 points down earlier during the day, The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended lower by 115 points at 7,660. The Nasdaq Composite Index, ended lower by 37 points at 1,518. S&P 500 ended lower by 17 points at 806.

All ten sectors registered losses led by the financial sector. Among Dow components, while GE tried to support the Dow, Microsoft and Intel were big losers.

Among major economic report for the day, The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported today that U.S. home prices rose 1.7% in January compared with December. It was the first monthly increase in a year. Home prices are down 6.3% in the past year and are down 9.6% from the peak in April 2006. In December, the year-over-year decline was 8.8%. December's index, originally reported as a 0.1% increase, was revised down to a 0.2% decline.

The report detailed that prices rose or were flat in eight of nine regions in January. only the Pacific states registered a decline, down 0.9%. Prices rose 3.9% in the East North Central region, which includes most of the Great Lakes states. Prices rose 3.6% in the South Atlantic region. In the past year, prices are down in all nine regions, led by the Pacific with a 21.1% decline. The smallest price decline has been the 0.4% drop in the West South Central (which includes Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana).

Crude prices ended lower on Tuesday, 24 March, 2009 as traders anticipated that tomorrow's weekly inventory report will show build up in crude inventories for last week. Market is expecting the report to show a build up of more crude inventories to the tune of more than 1 million barrels. The rebounding dollar was also the reason for lower crude price.

On Tuesday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for May delivery closed at $53.11/barrel (lower by $0.69 or 1.3%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier it fell to a low of $52.45 and also rose to a high of $53.50. Last week, crude ended higher by 10.4%. For the month of February, crude prices had ended higher by 1.5%.

In the currency market today, the dollar strengthened against its rivals. The dollar index, which measures the strength of the dollar against a basket of six currencies rose 0.3%.

Tomorrow, among economic reports expected are February durable goods orders data and February new home sales data. In addition, the weekly crude inventory report is due at 10:30ET.