Stocks Turn Mixed; FedEx, Banks Drag

Stocks turned mixed Wednesday as investors digested a tame inflation reading against a weak outlook from FedEx. Banks dragged after a credit downgrade.

Consumer prices rose just 0.1 percent in May, despite the rise in gasoline prices, after a flat reading in April. Over the past 12 months, prices have fallen by 1.3 percent, the most since 1950, the Labor Department reported.

The reading came as a relief that inflation wasn't any worse last month, but some market pros said it's not current inflation that is worrisome — it's the potential for a surge in inflation over the next two years.

The more troubling data point this morning was mortgage applications, which fell 15.8 percent to 514.4 last week, the lowest in nearly seven months, as rising mortgage rates scared away some buyers.

And the trade deficit fell nearly 35 percent to $101.5 billion in the first quarter, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2001 during the last recession.

Still to come: The Energy Department will release its weekly report on oil and gasoline inventories at 10:30 am ET.

Futures had started off the day on negative footing after FedEx said its earnings outlook was lower than Wall Street anticipated.

FedEx shares slipped after the package-delivery giant and economic bellwether beat earnings expectations but issued an outlook that fell short of analysts' projections.

US Bancorp said it's repaying $6.6 billion in bailout funds, making it the first bank to do so.

Several other banks are expected to start repaying government loans as well, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley .

Morgan Stanley is also going to start allowing hedge-fund clients to place some of their holdings in a trust bank, a new layer of asset protection, in an attempt to win back hedge-fund clients it lost after it was forced to become a bank-holding company in order to get those federal funds.

Bank shares had opened lower following news of the new Obama financial-reform plan, but sunk deeper after Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating on 22 banks amid concerns about volatile conditions and tighter regulations. Among them were: BB&T, Capital One Financial, PNC Financial, Regions Financial and Wells Fargo.

After details began trickling out, President Obama's financial-reform plan, which is due to be officially unveiled at 12:50 pm ET today, got mixed reviews.

Ralph Schlosstein, CEO of Evercore Partners, said the plan was "squarely in the middle," offering "rules that protect the system" while at the same time unleashing the "competitive spirits of capitalism."

But legendary investor George Soros warned against relying too much on regulators, in an opinion piece in the Financial Times.

Obama told CNBC in an interview Tuesday that the US is not in danger of overregulating the economy.

"If we've got rules of the road, that's what makes capitalism thrive," Obama said in a taped interview. "That's why people invest in this country."

The president said "most of these interventions" into the US economy—including the auto and bank bailouts—had already begun under President Bush and were only temporary.

"That's not something that we welcomed and the sooner we can get out, the better," he said.

• No Fly Zone: Obama Shows Pest Who's Boss

Meanwhile, Adobe shares posted its narrowest profit margin in more than 3 years but revenue fell less than expected. The company also said it would start charging users for an online version of Acrobat aimed at heavy business users. They will charge $14.99 a month for the basic application, which allows for Web meetings of up to five users and conversion of up to 10 uploaded documents to pdf format.

Techs were mostly lower but Qualcomm rose after Goldman added the chip stock to its "conviction buy" list.

Fellow chip maker Nvidia also rose after UBS upgraded its rating on the stock to "neutral" from "sell."

Oil fell toward $69 a barrel after official government data showed crude inventories fell by 3.9 million barrels last week but gasoline inventories rose by 3.4 million barrels.

Commodity and heavy industrial stocks continued to slide, with Alcoa and Caterpillar joining banks at the bottom of the Dow pack.

The tone for the U.S. stock market is still — at least in the short term — a negative one. The Dow has suffered consecutive triple-digit losses, with both the Dow and S&P 500 chalking up their biggest two-day declines since late March.

This Week:

WEDNESDAY: Obama to outline plans for financial reform
THURSDAY: Weekly jobless claims; leading indicators; Philly Fed index; Earnings from Research In Motion
FRIDAY: Quadruple witching

Send comments to .

© 2009 CNBC.com