Investing.com - The Dow Jones Industrial Average crawled closer to the emotionally significant 20,000 level this afternoon, but backtracked after President Obama's press conference this afternoon. The Dow closed down at 19843.41, down 0.4%, while the Nasdaq dipped to 5437.16, dipping 0.36%, and the S&P 500 fell back to 2258.07, or 0.18%.
Seven of the 11 market sectors of the S&P 500 rose during intraday trading, with the strongest gains coming from real estate. That sector surged 1.1% at one point even though there was a weak report on new housing starts.
Trading volume was temperate, as it is expected to be through the rest of the year, as traders refocus on the Christmas holidays, rather than the Fed's interest rate hikes.
Demand for Wall Street equities had been burgeoning since the presidential election in November, floating on hopes that Donald Trump’s policy proposals, including tax cuts and deregulation, will trigger potent U.S. economic growth.
The U.S. has been trapped in its slowest economic recovery since the end of World War II, growing at around 1%, but not much higher, during the Obama era. Around 90 million Americans are not employed, and not retired, and the growth rate is not strong enough to generate new jobs to gainfully re-employ them, economists note.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.08% rose 16 points, or 0.1%, to 19,868, during intraday trading, whilst the S&P 500 SPX, -0.23% slipped 0.7 point to 2,261, a decline of less than 0.1%. The Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.34% fell 7.6 points to 5,450, a move of 0.1%, also on intraday trading.
Watching the market ticker during Obama's news conference, DJIA, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all gave away gains from earlier in the day.