Investing.com – Wall Street traded mixed on Wednesday, with the Dow on track to break a seven-day winning streak, while oil was subject to volatility as market participants tried to balance bearish U.S. crude inventory data with bullish comments on an OPEC output agreement.
At 12:15PM ET (17:15GMT), the Dow Jones lost 85 points, or 0.45%, the S&P 500 fell 7 points, or 0.32% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite traded up 15 points, or 0.28%.
In oil markets, a 5.3 million barrel build in U.S. crude inventories caused a knee-jerk sell-off with prices initially extending losses.
Both gasoline and distillate inventories also unexpectedly grew in what was a bearish report from all perspectives.
However, just minutes after the release, Russian energy minister Alexander Novak sent bullish headlines across the wires and oil prices rapidly staged a turnaround.
Novak indicated that they were discussing scenarios to reach an oil market balance in a shorter time period and that he saw a high chance that OPEC would have an agreement in place by November 30.
At 12:17PM ET (17:17GMT), oil had pulled back from intraday highs reached on the remarks, but remained far from session lows. Specifically, U.S. crude oil futures fell 0.46% to $45.60, while Brent oil lost 0.55% to $46.69.
Meanwhile, investors digested mixed earnings.
On the upside, Target (NYSE:TGT) shares jumped nearly 8% after the second-largest U.S. retailer topped Wall Street's sales and earnings estimates, thanks to a rise in traffic and sales trends that helped boost profits.
In the red, Lowe’s (NYSE:LOW) saw shares slide 3% after the home improvement retailer reported quarterly earnings and revenue that missed analysts' expectations ahead of Wednesday's opening bell.
In other company headlines, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has offered concessions to EU antitrust regulators over its $26 billion bid for social network LinkedIn (NYSE:NYSE:LNKD), the European Commission said on Wednesday, as the U.S. software company seeks to allay concerns over its largest ever deal.
Also of note, Snapchat was reported to have filed for an initial public offering (IPO) thought to be valued at $20 billion to $25 billion in what would be the largest IPO since Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) went public two years ago.
On the economic front, both industrial and manufacturing production missed consensus estimates for an increase in October, dampening optimism over the health of the economy.
Furthermore, producer price inflation in the U.S. came in under forecasts with an unchanged reading in October, while core prices unexpectedly fell, in what would be considered another stumble in the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) intention to get inflation back up towards its 2% target at the start of the fourth quarter.
Still, the dollar continued to show strength after having hit a 14-year high against a basket of major currencies earlier in the session. At 12:18PM ET (17:18GMT), the U.S. dollar index was off session highs, up just 0.04% at 100.24.
Markets kept the odds of a Fed rate hike in December above 90% on Wednesday as investors looked ahead to an appearance by the head of the U.S. central bank Janet Yellen.
Yellen is scheduled to testify on the economic outlook before the Joint Economic Committee at 10:00AM ET (15:00GMT) on Thursday.