From Briefing.com: 4:35 pm : August finished on a flat note after a bit of end-of-month buying fizzled into the close. The lackluster finish left stocks to lock in another marked monthly loss.
Technical support at the 1040 line helped the S&P 500 bounce back from an opening slide. The rebound initially paused near the neutral line, but stocks then pushed into positive territory with the release of the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index for August. The Index climbed to 53.5 from 51.0. It was widely expected to slip to 50.0.
The broader market gave more weight to the consumer confidence reading than the generally anecdotal and entirely regional Chicago PMI, which came in at 56.7 for August. Not only did that figure fall short of the consensus of 57.0, but it was also the lowest since November 2009.
There was little reaction among market participants to the minutes from the August 10 FOMC meeting. As expressed in Fed Chairman Bernanke's speech last week, the minutes indicated that the pace of the economic recovery slowed in recent months. However, many policymakers judged that downside risks to the U.S. recovery had become somewhat larger.
Interest among buyers has been unsustainable in recent weeks, but there was some modest end-of-month buying, which helped drive some midsession gains and took trading volume above recent averages. However, many participants remain unwilling to jump back into stocks ahead of the monthly payrolls report. A glimpse into the official figures (due Friday) will come with the ADP Employment Change tomorrow morning. Caution ahead of the report left stocks to crawl to a flat finish.
Weakness of the past couple of weeks culminated with a 4.7% loss for the S&P 500 during August. That poor performance marks the stock market's third monthly loss in four months.
Amid such weakness the yield on the 10-year Note fell more than 40 basis points to close out August near 2.47%. It registered its 19-month low of 2.42% just last week.
Though stocks have been weak in recent weeks and there is a growing concern about the tenuous footing of the economy, merger and acquisition activity continues on. Most recently, Exelon (EXC 40.72, +0.20) announced it will acquire the renewable energy unit of Deere & Co. (DE 63.27, +0.29) in a deal valued at some $900 million.
Dow component 3M (MMM 78.55, -1.10) will pay an investor group $230 million to acquire Attenti Holdings S.A. That announcement came after 3M agreed to acquire Cogent (COGT 11.00, -0.09) just yesterday.
In other corporate news, Monsanto (MON 52.65, -3.25) issued a tepid revenue forecast, which caused it to fall sharply out of favor. Shares of MON were among this session's worst performing issues.
Advancing Sectors: Telecom (+1.1%), Financials (+0.9%), Utilities (+0.4%), Materials (+0.3%), Consumer Staples (+0.2%), Consumer Discretionary (+0.1%)
Declining Sectors: Tech (-0.6%), Health Care (-0.4%), Industrials (-0.3%), Energy (-0.2%)DJ30 +4.99 NASDAQ -5.94 NQ100 -0.3% R2K +0.1% SP400 +0.00% SP500 +0.41 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1264/2.12 bln/1320 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1654/1.40 bln/1332
4:07PM STEC Inc announces rule 10b5-1 trading plan (STEC) 11.16 -0.02
4:02PM Concurrent beats by $0.08, beats on revs (CCUR) 5.00 +0.05 : Reports Q4 (Jun) earnings of $0.11 per share, $0.08 better than the Thomson Reuters consensus of $0.03; revenues rose 20.1% year/year to $19.1 mln vs the $12.5 mln consensus.
2:38PM Semiconductor Hldrs ETF drops to new session/nine month low of 24.27 (SMH) 24.28 -0.36 : The SMH slipped under its Feb and last week's lows (24.42/24.38) in opening trade but quickly rebounded. A slow but steady slide this afternoon has recently taken out the early lows. Weighing on the SMH are: ADI -1.8%, AMD -2.7%, AMKR -1.7%, BRCM -5.8%, INTC -1.4%, LSI -2.6%, MU -2%, SNDK -2.5%, TER -3.1%.
8:09AM Trident Microsystems plans to pursue license agreements with TV OEMs and consumer electronics semiconductor providers; has not disclosed financial details of its licensing program (TRID) 1.43 :
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
