Stocks Turn Mixed; Apple Climbs 2%
Published: Monday, 27 Aug 2012
By: JeeYeon Park
Stocks quickly turned mixed in the first few minutes of trading Monday as investors looked ahead to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech later this week and after the Dow and S&P 500 snapped a six-week winning streak.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average struggled to hold gains. Microsoft [MSFT 30.78 0.22 (+0.72%) ] led the blue-chip gainers, while H-P [HPQ 17.475 -0.105 (-0.6%) ] lagged.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq opened higher. The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, traded near 16.
Despite the lackluster trading session, all three major indexes are poised to log their first August gains since 2009.
Among the key S&P sectors, techs gained, while energy slipped. Stocks enjoyed a rally over the last six weeks and touched a new four-year high, but posted their first weekly loss in six weeks last week amid uncertainties in the euro zone and questions over whether the Fed will implement another round of quantitative easing.
Investors will be looking ahead to Friday when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is set to give a speech at the St. Louis Fed’s annual symposium in Wyoming for hints of further easing. However, some economists doubt the speech will reveal any new details of policy plans.
Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans said the central bank should "take action now," buying bonds for as long as it takes to produce a steady decline in the employment rate.
Meanwhile, some policymakers have expressed concern in the last week that piling on more bond purchases will do little to help the economy and that letting inflation rates gain could open the door to uncontrolled price hikes.
Apple [AAPL 675.95 12.728 (+1.92%) ] jumped after the iPhone maker won a victory in a patent lawsuit against rival Samsung...
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