Briefing.com's Close Update

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Friday brought stocks their fourth straight loss, which left the S&P 500 3.8% lower for the week. Data continues to drive the action.

Morning participants took their initial trading cues from overseas participants, who shrugged off stronger-than-expected eurozone GDP and sent Europe's major bourses to losses of about 1%. Selling efforts against the DAX, FTSE, and CAC eased in the afternoon, but the initial response indicated that while data of past months may be solid there remains a strong concern about the future.

As such, the response to domestic data was rather muted. Consumer prices for July increased 0.3%, which is a slightly stronger increase than the 0.2% rise that had been widely expected. Excluding food and energy, consumer prices in July were up just 0.1%, as expected.

Total business inventories for June increased 0.3%, but that was mostly because inventories at retailers increased 0.8%. Given weaker sales of recent months, that increase means goods are accumulating rather than restocking shelves.

That said, retail sales reportedly increased 0.4% in July, but that is below the 0.5% increase that had been expected. Excluding autos, retail sales increased 0.2%, as expected.

There is no evidence that connects consumer confidence to spending, but the preliminary Consumer Confidence Survey for August from the University of Michigan improved modestly to 69.6, which is just below the 70.0 that had been widely expected.

Stocks spent most of the session chopping along in listless, lackluster fashion before trending lower into the close. The weak finish marked an appropriate conclusion the poor trade of the past five days.

Retailers were hit with some of the most selling. A disappointing outlook from JC Penney (JCP 19.82, -0.98) and an underwhelming response to the latest from Nordstrom (JWN 31.05, -2.39) dragged the group down to a 1.4% loss.

Utilities were the only sector to advance. They finished with a 0.3% gain, but the defensive-oriented sector's lack of market weight gives it little sway.

Meanwhile, tech stocks, which collectively carry the most weight of any sector, were among the weakest issues. They settled 0.7% lower as large-cap tech lagged. Weakness among large-caps caused the Nasdaq to underperform its counterparts again.

Tangled trade kept participants on the sidelines once again. In turn, trading volume on the NYSE totaled a paltry 870 million shares. Only once this week did share volume on the Big Board approach the 50-day average of 1.2 billion shares.

Treasuries had a solid session that saw the yield on the benchmark 10-year Note close back below 2.70% and the yield on the 30-year Bond move down to 3.86% for the first time in three weeks.

The greenback capped of an impressive week with a 0.4% gain against competing currencies. The move gave it a weekly gain of 3.1%, its best weekly performance since May.

Advancing Sectors: Utilities (+0.3%)
Declining Sectors: Consumer Discretionary (-1.1%), Tech (-0.7%), Materials (-0.4%), Health Care (-0.4%), Energy (-0.3%), Financials (-0.3%), Industrials (-0.2%), Telecom (-0.1%)
Unchanged: Consumer Staples

DJ30 -16.80 NASDAQ -16.79 NQ100 -0.7% R2K -1.2% SP400 -0.6% SP500 -4.36 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 774/1.62 bln/1798 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1367/870 mln/1637

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