News--The Post: "Mixed Markets Reflect Cooling Economy"
washingtonpost.com
>>> By Jerry Knight
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 2, 2000
Slower home sales on your street are good for Wall Street, investors decided today as they tried, once again, to forecast the Federal Reserve's next move on interest rates by extrapolating from economic data.
Their logic: Since new home sales are falling, for the third month in a row, the economy must be slowing down. That means the Fed won't be raising rates this month. And stable interest rates should benefit corporations, especially blue chips.
The result: The Dow Jones industrials and the Standard & Poors 500 stock index climbed for the third day in a row.
The Nasdaq stock market, deemed less blessed by stable rates, couldn't find positive territory. Winners outnumbered losers by two to one in both the Dow and the top 100 Nasdaq stocks. But Nasdaq's losers lost enough to wipe out all the winners' gains, while the Dow's laggards only slowed the index's rise. <<< |
