U.S. stocks were mixed Wednesday, continuing a bumpy week on Wall Street.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 33 points, or 0.3 percent, to 13,137 as of 1:45 p.m. It had been up 20 shortly after the opening bell. The Dow had its biggest loss in two weeks on Tuesday, falling 69 points.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell two points to 1,403, and the Nasdaq composite rose seven points to 3,081.
Hewlett–Packard Co. led the Dow lower, sliding 2 percent after saying it would combine its printer and PC divisions to save money and improve efficiency. H–P is coping with declining sales of PCs and printer ink as smartphones, tablets and electronic document–sharing gain popularity.
Earlier Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors released a mixed report about the state of the housing market. Sales of previously occupied homes dipped last month, but the sales pace for the winter was the best in five years, NAR said. Housing has been dragging on the economic recovery; an oversupply of homes has decimated construction and other trades in many parts of the country.
Baker Hughes (News - Alert) fell 5 percent, the most of any company in the S&P 500, after the oil–field services company said its profit margin would fall below last quarter's as companies shift from crude to natural gas exploration. Baker Hughes faces shortages of raw materials used in its pressure pumping business, a decline in fleet usage and higher–than–expected personnel and logistics costs.
Hartford Financial jumped 4 percent after the company said it would get out of the annuity business and focus on property and casualty insurance, group benefits and mutual funds. Hedge fund manager John Paulson had urged Hartford to spin off businesses.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters soared 11 percent. The company said it was expanding its partnership with Starbucks to sell Starbucks' Vue coffee packs for use in Green Mountain's Keurig single–cup machines. The news relieved investors concerned that Starbucks' new single–cup Verismo (News - Alert) coffee machine might be a competitive threat to Keurig.
FSI International, which makes equipment for producing microelectronics, jumped 8 percent after the company reported that orders skyrocketed in the latest quarter, helping the company beat analysts' forecasts.
The yield on the 10–year Treasury note fell to 2.29 percent from 2.36 percent late Tuesday. Gold and crude oil prices rose slightly.
Stocks closed lower on Tuesday after two reports suggested an economic slowdown in China. Supercharged economic growth in China over the past three years has helped sustain the global economic recovery. The Dow had its biggest loss since March 6.
The Dow is still up 1.6 percent this month and 7.7 percent so far this year. Other indexes are up even more in the year to date: The S&P 500 is up 11.7 percent, the technology–focused Nasdaq composite 18.1 percent.
In a research report Wednesday, Goldman Sachs analysts urged investors to dump bonds and put money into stocks. The report argues that the weak economic growth in the United States and Europe is not universal, and that the 2010s could be the strongest period for world growth between 1980 and 2050.
It also argues that, while Japan's two decades of economic stagnation in the 1990s and 2000s are a tempting comparison to what the U.S. and Europe face today, Japanese stocks were far more overvalued before Japan entered its decline.
"We think it's time to say a 'long goodbye' to bonds, and embrace the 'long good buy' for equities as we expect them to embark on an upward trend over the next few years," the report says.
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