Major stock indexes were little changed in a low-volume session on Wednesday, but some investors were encouraged to see equities avoid a sell-off amid the euro zone’s lingering debt problems.
Indexes held on to the previous day’s large gains even as the euro dropped sharply against the dollar. Notably, American banks held up well, even though bad news in Europe centered on the difficulties for some European lenders.
Tight credit markets are making it expensive for European banks to raise capital and for euro zone countries to refinance debt.
The latest sign of stress came from Italy’s biggest bank, UniCredit, which fell nearly 10 percent after it offered to sell 7.5 billion euros ($9.8 billion) in shares at a steep discount to shore up its balance sheet. That level, in turn, could discourage other lenders from tapping the market to raise money.
UniCredit slumped 14.5 percent on Wednesday, the biggest blue-chip loser in Europe. A gauge of European bank shares dropped 1.6 percent, but in New York, the KBW bank index added 0.34 percent.
“Some of what’s been going on in the last weeks is the U.S. is starting to delink from Europe,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis.
“Not that we’ve totally isolated ourselves, but the fact you’re seeing more days when the euro is off and the market here is up is evidence of some delinking,” he said. “If the U.S. economy is growing again, it’s much less vulnerable to external shocks.”
Investors were encouraged by a sharp rise in new orders for factory goods in the United States in November, further evidence the economy was recovering.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 21.04 points, or 0.17 percent, to 12,418.42. The Standard Poor’s 500-stock index edged up 0.24 point, or 0.02 percent, to 1,277.30. The Nasdaq dipped 0.36 point, or 0.01 percent, to 2,648.36.
The Treasury’s 10-year note fell 8/32, to 100 5/32. The yield rose to 1.98 percent, from 1.96 percent late Tuesday.
New-vehicle sales released on Wednesday showed that automakers ended the year with strong sales, but they forecast lower growth in 2012. G.M. shares rose 0.5 percent, to $21.15, while Ford added 1.5 percent, to $11.30.
Yahoo shares fell 3.1 percent to $15.78 after the company named the PayPal president, Scott Thompson, its chief executive.
ATT agreed on Tuesday to pay TiVo a minimum of $215 million and additional monthly licensing fees to settle a patent infringement dispute. ATT shares rose 0.16 percent, to $30.43, and TiVo jumped 10.1 percent, to $9.82.
But the euro and European stocks struggled as investors fretted about the region’s debt crisis and more countries prepared to tap markets. The euro, which moved in lockstep with equities for most of the last quarter, slumped to its lowest level against the dollar in nearly a week.
The euro fell as much as 0.84 percent to $1.2941, within striking distance of its 2011 trough of $1.2858, hit in the last week of December. It closed at $1.2944 in New York on Wednesday.
“The market is still teetering between European concerns and better economic data here in the United States, so I’m not surprised to see this kind of volatility,” said King Lip, chief investment officer at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco.
Crude oil future prices rose after European governments agreed in principle to ban imports of Iranian oil, dealing a blow to Tehran that crowns new Western sanctions months before an Iranian election. Oil settled at $103.28 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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