Wall Street ends mixed; crude slips, dollar down

In the US markets, stocks closed mixed. Though the Dow never made it out of the red, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq turned modest losses into fractional gains after participants initially reacted negatively to news of a rate hike in china. However, a blizzard in the northeast made it a quiet day on Wall Street.
Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.16% or 18.46 points at 11555.03. Nasdaq Composite was up 0.06% or 1.67 points at 2667.27. Standard & Poor's 500 was up 0.06% or 0.77 points at 1257.54.

News flow is slow and there were no data announcements to tap however some key data from US is expected today. The December consumer confidence data is expected to come in higher at 57.4 after it rose more than four points to 54.1 in November led by gains in the expectations component.
Investors are also going to watch out for the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index that tracks monthly changes in the value of residential real estate in 20 metropolitan regions across the US.
In the currency space, the euro rose against the dollar after clawing back above its 200-day moving average, though sentiment on the single currency remained bearish amid worries about Portugal's and Spain's debt. The dollar index continued to hover close to the 80 mark. Trading ranks were extremely thin.
In commodities, oil dipped after briefly hitting its third successive 26-month high. It thus ended a five-day rally after a Chinese rate increase threatened to slow demand and a major east coast refinery resumed operations.


[via Moneycontrol.com]