U.S. stock market today: The global economy is facing downward pressure, and the multi-country central banks have cut interest rates or expanded the scale of quantitative easing. The U.S. Fed minutes did not suggest further quantitative easing, the market disappointment sentiment spread. The U.S. stock market opened lower, and the three major indexes finally closed down.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 30.73 points, or 0.24%, to close at 12,573.80 points; the Nasdaq composite index retreated 21.79 points, or 0.75%, to finish at 2,866.19 points and the S&P 500 index shed 6.64 points, or 0.49%, to end at 1,334.81 points.
Macroeconomic:
Warren Buffett said in an interview with CNBC today that the U.S. economy’s overall growth has dropped slightly, therefore, the economy is relatively flat more or less. He is currently sitting on his hands about the economic trend.
The bank of England announced to expand quantitative easing scale by 50 billion pounds (about $78 billion), making the total amount of Bank of England’s QE increase to 375 billion pounds (about $585 billion).
Brazilian Central Bank, the Bank of Korea and the Bank of Japan have launched their respective latest monetary easing. Brazilian Central Bank lowered interest rate by 50 basis points to a record low of 8.0%; the Bank of Korea unexpectedly cut interest rate by 25 basis points to 3%, the first cut over the past three and a half years; the Bank of Japan did not cut interest rates, instead, the bank expanded financial asset buy scale by 5 trillion yen to the total amount of 45 trillion yen (about $564 billion).
The U.S. government announced that initial jobless claims fell to 350,000 last week, hitting a new low since March 2008; also significantly lower than the average estimate of 375,000 of Wall Street analysts.
U.S. stock market today:
Tech sector led losses while utilities stocks advanced ahead.
