While you were sleeping: Wall St falls but May was good for stocks

Stocks on Wall Street fell but the two of the three major benchmarks finished the month higher.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 86.09 points, or 0.5%, lower at 17,787.13. It is down 0.2% for May but up 1.8% for the year.

The broader S&P 500 index eased 0.1% to 2096.95 but rose 1.2% in May and has gained more than 2% this year.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.3% to 4948.05 and is up 3.2% for May.

“While the economy is not booming, I think the data in the month of May have confirmed that people’s worst worries were overdone, and that’s why markets are generally up,” David Kelly, chief global strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, told Dow Jones.

Du Pont and Boeing led the Dow down, losing 2.6% and 2.4% respectively, while Microsoft, up 1.3%, and Caterpillar, up 0.8%, led the advancing shares.

Midway through the month, major indexes gave up much of their gains for the year after improving economic data and comments from US Federal Reserve officials signalled that a rate rise could come as soon as June.

“There’s a couple of big events on the horizon,and I’d be surprised if the market moved a lot before them,” Michael Antonelli, equity sales trader at Robert W Baird, told Dow Jones.

These include a European Central Bank meeting, an Opec gathering in Vienna and the final monthly US jobs report before the Fed‘s meeting on June 14-15.

US spending up
In new economic data, US consumer spending grew at the fastest pace in nearly seven years in April, rising 1% from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said.

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index, however, slipped to 92.6 in May, from an upwardly revised 94.7 in April. It was the second straight monthly decline.

Following five consecutive sessions of gains, the Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.8% but still climbed 1.7% in May, its best monthly performance since November.

In commodities, US crude oil slipped 0.3% to $US49.15 a barrel. Analysts don’t think the Opec meeting will result in any formal consensus on production cuts.

Gold for June delivery was up less than 0.1% at $US1214.80 an ounce. Gold lost 5.8% this month.