Daily Insight

U.S. stock indices ended mixed on Wednesday as some legislative concerns and a cautious economic report from the Fed offset better-than-expected results from the service sector. The major indices ended the session essentially flat with the Dow Industrials and NASDAQ Composite slipping, while the broad S&P 500 ended fractionally higher.

Things were going pretty well as somewhat upbeat sentiment in pre-market futures trading flowed into the official session. However, the gains evaporated shortly after lunch, right around the time of President Obama’s press conference urging lawmakers to vote on health-care overhaul (which means they’ll choose reconciliation – so the hurdle is just 51 votes in the Senate) and the Fed released its latest Beige Book – that report expressed concerns over the real estate market and wasn’t particularly cheery on the labor market either.

Basic material shares were the best-performing sector for a third-straight session. Health-care was the laggard, leading the three of the 10 major sectors that fell on the session.
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Brent Vondera, Senior Analyst