Investing.com – Wall Street traded slightly lower in light pre-Christmas trade on Wednesday with investors reluctant to bid the Dow up to the key 20,000 point psychological level.
At 11:42AM ET (16:42GMT), the Dow Jones slipped 10 points, or 0.05%, the S&P 500 dropped 2 points or 0.11%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite traded down 12 points, or 0.23%.
Were the Dow to hit 20,000 points later in the session, it would be the fastest 1,000 point move from one triple-zero number to another, as the blue-chip index hit 19,000 points just 20 trading days ago on November 22.
Markets were wary of taking the rally higher on Wednesday. After the November 8 surprise victory of Donald Trump to the presidency spurred expectations of fiscal policies that would spur economic growth, the Dow is up around 9% since that day’s close.
Wednesday’s economic calendar was light though November existing home sales unexpectedly rose, marking the fastest pace since February 2007.
Earnings news was mostly weak with FedEx (NYSE:FDX), Accenture (NYSE:ACN), Paychex (NASDAQ:PAYX), Finish Line (NASDAQ:FINL) and Winnebago (NYSE:WGO) slumping in Wednesday’s trade.
Even Nike (NYSE:NKE) posted slight losses despite better-than-expected revenue as traders appeared to focus on a 200 basis point drop gross margin and 11% growth in inventories that gave the impression that the sportswear company may be losing competitive advantage.
Meanwhile, oil prices declined on Wednesday, falling to the lowest levels of the session after data showed a surprise increase in U.S. crude supplies last week.
U.S. crude futures fell 0.26% to $53.16 by 11:44AM ET (15:44GMT), while Brent oil traded down 0.43% to $55.11.