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Stocks declined Wednesday as a disappointing durable-good report fueled worries about the recovery. Plus, a sharp selloff in China dragged on oil prices, which also weighed on the market.
This came after the Dow snapped a three-day winning streak Tuesday amid a disappointing batch of earnings and a slump in consumer confidence. Still, there were some bullish components to yesterday's session: The Dow ended down just over 11 points, after being down as much as 100 points earlier in the session. And the Nasdaq pulled off a gain of 0.4 percent.
Today's economic news poured more water on recovery talk: Orders for durable goods, big-ticket items such as refrigerators and cars, fell 2.5 percent in June amid weak demand for communications and transportation equipment. That was much sharper than 1.3-percent decline in May and the 0.6-percent drop economists had expected.
And mortgage applications fell for the first time in four weeks.
Still to come: The Fed's beige book at 2pm.
The market has been on a "sugar high" this month while the economy is still floundering, Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC. The levels the market reached simply weren't in line with where the economy was at, he said.
The big buzz of the day was that Micro-hoo is finally here: Microsoft [MSFT
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] and Yahoo [YHOO
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] have finally reached an agreement! The tech titans brought years of flirtation and bickering to a close with a deal that will combine their search capacities to compete against Google [GOOG
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This was just the latest wheeling and dealing from the tech sector: IBM agreed to buy SPSS, which makes analytics software, and Agilent Technologies agreed to buy scientific-instrument maker Varian. Plus, a pair of deals in the wireless sector: Sprint Nextel is buying Virgin Mobil USA and Swedish telecom Ericsson is buying Nortel's wireless unit.
In earnings news today, Time Warner [TWX
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And ConocoPhillips [COP
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] reported its profit plunged 76 percent amid the sharp drop in oil prices but beat analysts' target by a penny.
This came after BP reported Tuesday that its profit was cut in half by the drop in oil prices. Later this week, we'll get results from Dow energy components ExxonMobil [XOM
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After the bell today, results are due from credit-card provider Visa [V
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Investors will also closely be watching today's 5-year note auction. Results are due out at 1 pm ET. That follows a so-so auction of 2-year notes yesterday. A 7-year auction is coming tomorrow.
- Peter Schacknow contributed to this report.
Still to Come:
WEDNESDAY: Weekly crude inventories; Fed's beige book; Earnings from Visa after the bell
THURSDAY: Weekly jobless claims; Earnings from AstraZeneca, ExxonMobil, Colgate-Palmolive, Eastman Kodak, Kellogg, MasterCard, Motorola, Disney, MetLife
FRIDAY: GDP; Chicago PMI; Earnings from Chevron
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