US close: Wall Street extends highs but softer oil limits gains

Wall Street's Dow Jones and S&P 500 indices inched higher to extend their all-time highest closes for the fourth day on Wednesday as falling oil prices put the brakes on any larger gains.

The Dow Jones added 0.13% to finish the session at 18,372.12 and the S&P nosed 0.01% higher to 2,152.43, while the Nasdaq dipped 0.34% lower to 5,005.73.

Crude prices fell after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said a global supply glut was threatening market recovery.

In its oil market report for July, IEA said OPEC crude output rose by 400,000 barrels per day in June to an eight-year high of 33.21m barrels per day, including newly re-joined Gabon.

Separately, the US Energy Information Agency said domestic weekly crude inventories fell by 2.5m barrels to 521.8m barrels in the week to 8 July.

West Texas Intermediate dropped 3.5% to $45.15 a barrel and Brent crude by 3.8% to $46.64.

In other macroeconomic data, the Federal Reserve's 'Beige Book' report provided little motivation for an urgent US interest rate hike, with scant indication that inflation will buck up any time soon.

The report of anecdotal information collected from business contacts across the central bank's various districts recorded wage pressure was "modest to moderate" in most of its districts, while "price pressures remained slight".

At the same time, the Treasury Department revealed a ballooning budget deficit at the end of June of $401bn, up 27% from the $316bn a year ago. Tax receipts since the beginning of the fiscal year last October maintained the slowdown seen over the past few months to rise just 0.9%, versus a spending increase of 3.9% as individual income tax collection has risen but corporate tax revenues is down 11%. Over the past 12 months, the deficit amounted to 2.9% of GDP from 2.6% previously.

Earlier, US import prices data showed a smaller rise than was expected for June as rising costs for petroleum products were offset by falling consumer and capital goods prices. According to the Labor Department, import prices increased 0.2% last month after an unrevised 1.4% jump in May. Economists had expected a 0.5% increase.

“Recently, US import prices have been dragged down by two major factors: the decline in oil prices and dollar strength,” said Barclays.

“With the effects of lower oil prices and past appreciation of the dollar having largely waned, the renewed weakness in import prices is a concern. Although we caution against over-interpreting import price data, this weakness is worth monitoring carefully, as it likely reflects soft demand, either domestically or internationally.”

Meanwhile, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan suggested a "slow, gradual, careful" approach to raising interest rates is very appropriate, during a speech in Houston. He said global headwinds mean monetary policy should remain modestly, but not wildly, accommodative.

Later in the evening, Philadelphia Fed President Harker was due to give a speech on the economic outlook at the 2016 World Class Summit.

Elsewhere, traders paid close attention as China’s trade surplus narrowed to $48.11bn in June from $49.98bn a month earlier as exports fell. Exports dropped 4.8% in June compared to a year ago following a 4.1% drop in May, while economists had expected a 5% decline. Imports decreased 8.4% year-on-year in June, more than the 6.2% slide expected by analysts after the 0.4% fall in May.

On the company front, Juno Therapeutics gained after the drugmaker late Tuesday said it would resume a drug trial of a potential leukemia treatment.

Tesla stock dropped in response to news the electric car group will sell a cheaper version of its Model Xcrossover vehicle as investors remain concerned about the fatal car crash of one of its customers who was driving in autopilot mode.

LED chips maker SemiLEDS Corp. slumped after saying late Tuesday that third quarter its loss widened to $3.3m on a 18% drop in revenue.

Dow Jones - Risers

Unitedhealth Group Inc. (UNH) $141.43 1.16%
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) $55.98 0.96%
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) $157.92 0.64%
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) $158.02 0.62%
United Technologies Corp. (UTX) $105.05 0.56%
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) $53.51 0.56%
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) $73.61 0.48%
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) $29.75 0.47%
McDonald's Corp. (MCD) $122.82 0.47%
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) $45.74 0.35%