Big energy stocks dragged on Wall street today with oil dumping below the $38 level on stock pile concerns and doubts in the freeze of supply, reaching a low of $37.72 before a recovery drift higher.
This coupled with the ECB announcements and mixed sentiment about the effectiveness of actions left investors nervous in the US session and early gains were wiped off the board, but closing prices were not half as bad as intra sessions losses on the day of more than 1 percent at session lows.
The ECB lowered interest rates deeper into negative territory earlier and announced a comprehensive package of monetary easing measures. Analysts at Bank of Tokyo Mitusubishi explained that the package of interest rate easing measures announced by the ECB included: i) lowering the interest rate on the main refinancing operations of the Eurosystem by 0.05 percentage point to 0.00%, ii) lowering the interest rate on the marginal lending facility by 0.05 percentage point to 0.25%, and iii) lowering the interest rate on the deposit facility by 0.10 percentage point to -0.40%.
The Dow Jones closed circa 5 points down, but was a better looking picture than earlier in the session when it was falling over 170 points. The S&P 500 closed pretty much flat after a recovery from an intraday decline of 1 percent. The Nasdaq composite underperformed with a loss of about a quarter percent, but closed well above session lows.
(Market News Provided by FXstreet)