While you were sleeping: Stocks stall as Fed divides on unwinding balance sheet

Wall Street was mixed, as were US Federal Reserve policy makers about the timing to start unwinding the central bank's balance sheet.

"Several preferred to announce a start to the process within a couple of months," according to minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's June meeting, released on Wednesday.

"However, some others emphasised that deferring the decision until later in the year would permit additional time to assess the outlook for economic activity and inflation."

Some policy makers are concerned about weak price growth.

"Several participants expressed concern that progress toward the committee's 2% longer-run inflation objective might have slowed and that the recent softness in inflation might persist."

The central bank will release its monetary policy report to Congress on Friday.

In the latest US economic data, a Commerce Department report showed factory goods orders fell 0.8% in May, following a revised 0.3% slide in April. May's decline was larger than economists had predicted though April's drop was smaller than initially reported.

Dow barely moves
At the close of trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average barely shifted from its shorted Monday session ahead of the July 4 holiday. The Dow eased 1.1points to 21,478.17. However, the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.7% to 6150.86 while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 0.15% to 2432.54.

In the Dow, Walt Disney and Exxon Mobil were 1.9% and 1.8% weaker respectively, outweighing advances by Intel and Boeing, up 2.4% and 1.7% respectively.

Chevron declined 1.7% along with other energy stocks as the price of oil slid amid reports that Russia does not support additional production cuts for OPEC and its non-OPEC partners to help ease the global glut. Crude futures fell 4.1% to $US45.13 a barrel.

"Energy I have a real hard time getting excited about," Robert Phipps, director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, Texas, told Reuters. "The technology has come along where the cost of production just keeps coming down and down."

O'Reilly Automotive plunged 18.6% after the car parts retailer reported same-store sales for its latest quarter that fell short of its own guidance. Shares of rivals including Advance Auto Parts and AutoZone also slid, down 11.2% and 9.3% respectively.

Semiconductor sales rise
Semiconductor stocks led a surge in the tech sector after a three-day losing streak. Chipmaker Nvidia added 2.7% after announcing an artificial-intelligence technology partnership with Chinese internet giant Baidu. 

Advanced Micro Devices rose 8.6% and Micron Technology gained 4.7%. On Monday, the Semiconductor Industry Association said chip sales grew 22.6% in May compared with a year earlier, the largest such increase since September 2010.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was 2.334%, below Monday’s 2.352% closing level.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the session with a 0.2% increase from the previous close. The UK's FTSE 100 Index rose 0.1%, Germany's DAX Index added 0.1% and France's CAC40 Index also gained 0.1%.

(BusinessDesk)