Stocks closed mostly higher in moderate trading Thursday, as Wall Street’s New Year’s losing streak ended.
A sharp rise in oil futures prices boosted energy stocks. Oil giant Unocal gained $3.15, to $44.34, on reports that a Chinese oil company may acquire Unocal’s Asian operations.
“We had an extremely strong final quarter of last year,” said Brett Gallagher, head of U.S. trading at Julius Bear Investment Management.
“Everybody was riding the momentum through year’s end, and now maybe they are trying to position themselves for the long haul.”
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 25.05 points, to 10,622.88. Exxon Mobil was among the day’s winners, gaining 63 cents, to $50.12.
Shares of retailing companies were mixed, reflecting good and bad reports from the holiday shopping season.
Target dropped $2.78, to $48.50, after the company said fourth-quarter profits would disappoint analysts. Wal-Mart Stores added 76 cents, to $54.05. The company said December sales rose 3 percent, at the high end of its forecast.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 4.15, to 1187.89. The Nasdaq composite index slipped 1.24, to 2090.00. The Russell 2000 index of small-company stocks added 2.34, to 619.82.
Among stocks in the news, two of last year’s biggest gainers, online auction service eBay and coffee vendor Starbucks, have retreated in the new year.
Starbucks lost $1.86, to $59.74, in Thursday’s session, and eBay dropped $4.72, to $106.18.
On the flip side, one of last year’s worst stocks, biotech developer Chiron, has rallied this week. Thursday, shares gained $1.16, to $35.96.
“Up until early December, health care had been our single biggest underweighting,” Gallagher said.
“We’ve now moved to overweight health care–not that you’re going to see a lot of positive headlines out there, but the negative headlines are pretty much out there.”
New York Stock Exchange trading volume reached 1.54 billion shares. Winners outnumbered losers by about a 4-3 ratio. Nasdaq trading volume totaled 2.12 billion shares, as losers held a narrow lead.
Treasury securities closed higher. A bigger-than-expected increase in the weekly report on jobless benefit claims fueled speculation about a weak December job growth report Friday,
Analysts on average predicted a gain of 175,000 jobs, up from 112,000 new jobs reported for November.
An auction of options based on the expected payroll number, conducted by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, resulted in an estimate of 178,000 new jobs in December.
Santa’s elves: Everyone had his or her own experiences encountering–or not–sales personnel during the holiday shopping period.
Shoppers often complain that retailing service ain’t what it used to be. But that’s probably by design, as far as retail store owners are concerned.
Friday’s report on December job growth will provide a clue of how bad it’s getting.
“November retail payrolls fell a seasonally adjusted 16,000, suggesting that seasonal hirings began on a soft note,” said Ray Stone of Stone & McCarthy Research Associates. He predicted a 155,000 increase in December jobs, compared with the consensus view of economists of 175,000.
“Our best guess is that December retail payrolls are little changed from November,” Stone wrote in his preview of the Labor Department data.
Shares of Monster Worldwide, an online job recruiting service, have dropped nearly 15 percent this year. Traditional help-wanted advertising in newspapers has been weak.
Economist Ian Shepherdson at High Frequency Economics says higher oil prices are the main culprit behind the sluggish job picture.
He sees a 150,000 increase in December jobs.
Local news: Personal-care productsmaker Alberto-Culver, Melrose Park, reached an all-time closing high of $50.51. Shares have reversed a late-summer slump and are up about 20 percent since mid-October.
On Monday, the company disclosed the acquisition of CosmoProf, a beauty products distributor. Officials said the deal would boost fiscal 2005 profits.
