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NEW YORK - Wall Street trudged through a listless session Monday, closing narrowly mixed as oil prices edged closer to $45 per barrel and investors hoped for assurance from the Federal Reserve that the economy was still on track.
Trading was very light in advance of today's Fed meeting, at which the Open Market Committee will decide whether to raise baseline interest rates by a quarter percentage point to 1.5 percent. While the move had been widely expected before last week, a recent string of bad news has left Wall Street wondering whether the Fed will, or should, raise rates.
"Tomorrow is going to be key," said Russ Koesterich, U.S. equity strategist at State Street Corp. in Boston. Even the bargain hunters couldn't withstand the overall pessimism of the market, as a wave of late-session selling erased the market's modest gains from early in the session. Investors were particularly concerned with oil prices, which climbed once again as Russian oil giant Yukos encountered fresh problems. A barrel of light crude was quoted at $44.84, up 89 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices hit a new record high earlier in the session.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.67, or 0.01 percent, to 9,814.66.
Broader stock indicators were narrowly mixed. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up 1.25, or 0.1 percent, at 1,065.22, and the Nasdaq composite index lost 2.25, or 0.1 percent, to 1,774.64.
The markets sold off heavily last week as oil prices climbed to new highs and the government reported a paltry 32,000 jobs created in July. The combination left investors concerned that inflation might grip an economy that threatens to slow considerably.
The latest economic news didn't help with forecasts, either. The government reported Monday that wholesale inventories rose 1.1 percent in June. Wall Street had been expecting a 0.6 percent rise for the month. While the inventory figure shows strong industrial productivity, it also raises questions on whether supply may soon outpace a reduced consumer demand.
Decliners barely outnumbered advancers on the New York Stock Exchange, where preliminary consolidated volume came to 1.32-billion shares, compared with 1.81-billion on Friday.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was down 1.27, or 0.2 percent, at 518.38.
Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.6 percent. In Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 closed down 0.5 percent, France's CAC-40 dropped 0.9 percent for the session and Germany's DAX index tumbled 1 percent.