NEW YORK (AP) – Stocks were slightly lower in early trading Wednesday, adding to big declines the day before, as U.S. investors waited to hear from the Federal Reserve and for corporate earnings reports to start coming in.
KEEPING SCORE: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 13 points, or 0.1 percent, to 16,708 as of 10:06 a.m. Eastern. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down two points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,933 and the Nasdaq composite fell four points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,391. All three indexes were moving between small gains and losses in early trading.
GROWTH WORRIES: Investors have become worried about the future of global economic growth after the IMF trimmed its outlook for this year and next, citing weaker economic activity in Japan, Latin America and Europe. The IMF expects the global economy will grow 3.3 percent this year, slightly below what it forecast in July. Earlier this week Germany said its industrial output fell 4 percent in August, far more than expected.
DOWN: Stocks had one of their biggest single-day declines of the year Tuesday, with the Dow falling 272 points. Stocks have been on a multi-week downward trend, mostly because of the economic concerns in Europe and Asia. With Tuesday’s fall, the Dow and S&P 500 are on pace to have their worst week in two months.
Takuya Takahashi, a strategist at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo, said the IMF forecast cuts and concerns about the world economy were the main culprit for this week’s stock declines. “I was expecting them to go down even further,” he said. Takahashi noted investors were taking a wait-and-see attitude ahead of comments from the Fed and earnings from U.S. companies.
LOOKING AHEAD: The U.S. Federal Reserve is due to release minutes from its latest policy meeting Wednesday afternoon. Investors will be looking for signs of when the Fed might raise interest rates. The first increase is not expected until mid-2015, but the U.S. labor market has been recovering at a steady pace, suggesting a hike could come sooner.
EARNINGS SEASON APPROACHES: Aluminum company Alcoa will report its quarterly results after the closing bell Wednesday. Traditionally Alcoa marks the start of Wall Street’s quarterly earnings season, but most of S&P 500 companies will not report for another week or so. Analysts are looking for Alcoa to report a profit of 22 cents a share, according to FactSet.
ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude fell 99 cents to $87.94 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, fell 83 cents to close at $91.08 on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
CURRENCIES: The euro rose to $1.2651 from $1.2630. The dollar was trading at 108.33 yen, down from 108.61 yen.
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AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed to this report from Tokyo.