US stocks mostly down on Yellen speech

Wall Street stocks on Friday finished mostly lower following a cautious appraisal of the US jobs market by Fed Chair Janet Yellen and a sharpening of tensions over Ukraine. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 38.27 points (0.22 per cent) to 17,001.22. The broad-based S&P 500 shed 3.97 (0.20 per cent) to 1,988.40 while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 6.45 (0.14 per cent) to 4,358.55. Yellen told a gathering of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that while some economic data has improved, there still remains considerable uncertainty about the level of employment. ‘Unfortunately, the speech was a disappointment to those who looked for clues about the Fed’s policy course in the near term,’ Briefing.com said. Analysts said Nasdaq was lifted by strong earnings from cloud-computing company Salesforce.com (+7.3 per cent), which boosted other software companies. Salesforce said fiscal 2015 revenues would come in at $5.34-$5.37 billion. Analysts had projected sales of $5.34 billion. Another Nasdaq company, apparel retailer Ross Stores, jumped 7.4 per cent on a 12.4 per cent increase in second-quarter earnings to $239.6 million. Power company Dynegy bolted 8.8 per cent higher after announcing deals worth $6.25 billion with Duke Energy and Energy Capital Partners to buy 12,500 megawatts in power-generation capacity, nearly doubling its fleet. Dynegy said the deal would improve its competitive position in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Duke shed 0.2 per cent. Gap jumped 5.2 per cent as second-quarter earnings rose by nearly 10 per cent to $332 million. The apparel retailer also announced plans to enter the Indian market in a franchising deal with Arvind Lifestyle Brand that will lead to about 40 franchise-operated Gap stores in India. Keurig Green Mountain jumped 13.3 per cent following a deal with Food giant Kraft to sell Kraft’s branded coffees in Keurig’s brewing systems. Kraft slipped 0.1 per cent. Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury dipped to 2.40 per cent from 2.41 per cent on Thursday, while the 30-year dropped to 3.16 per cent from 3.19 per cent. Bond prices and yields move inversely, according to AFP.