Investing.com –After an initially positive open, Wall Street remained indecisive nearing midday on Thursday, wobbling back and forth across the unchanged mark after the prior session’s triple-digit loss in the Dow Jones in pre-New Year holiday thinned trade.
At 11:33AM ET (16:33GMT), the Dow Jones slipped 2 points, or 0.01%, the S&P 500 gave up 2 points, or 0.08%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite traded down 11 points, or 0.20%.
U.S. stocks managed to grab back some of the points lost on Wednesday when the Dow registered its second largest drop since the November 8 presidential election and appeared to shut the door on hopes of reaching 20,000 points before the year’s end.
Trading has been thin due to the holiday season with many market participants on vacation or having already closed their books for the year and looking ahead to 2017.
Friday, the last trading session of this year, was expected to see even more of a slowdown in a session with no major economic data ahead of a three-day weekend due to Wall Street’s close the following Monday.
Thursday’s main data point, weekly initial jobless claims, came out slightly under expectations. However, the data point did little to move trade as the labor market continues to be solid and is widely considered to be reflecting levels of full employment.
In other data released on Wednesday, the U.S. trade deficit in November widened to $65.3 billion, missing expectations for it to narrow to $61.5 billion, while wholesale inventories increased by 0.9%, compared to forecasts for just a 0.1% gain.
The U.S. dollar rally lost steam in light pre-New Year holiday trade on Thursday, slipping from its 14-year-high against a basket of currencies as investors took profits in the run-up to the end of the year.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was down 0.53% at 102.69 by 11:35AM ET (15:35GMT), pulling back from last week's 14-year peak of 103.62.
Gold prices remained close to a two-week high hit on Thursday amid low-volume holiday trading, as the U.S. dollar and global stock markets pulled back, boosting the appeal of the yellow metal.
Gold for February delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange rose to a session peak of $1,159.50 a troy ounce, a level not seen since December 14. At 11:36AM ET (15:36GMT), the precious metal was last up 1.47 %, or $16.75, at $1,157.65.
Meanwhile, mixed U.S. crude inventory data caused choppy trade in oil prices on Thursday.
For the bears, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report that crude oil inventories rose by 0.614 million barrels in the week ended December 23, compared to forecasts for a draw of 2.060 million barrels.
However, that did come a day after the American Petroleum Institute had reported a much larger build of 4.2 million barrels.
On other bullish signals for prices, both gasoline inventories and distillate stockpiles registered unexpected stock draws.
Prices were all over the map in the half hour following the release, but at 11:37AM ET (15:37GMT), U.S. crude futures fell 0.30% to $53.90, while Brent oil inched up 0.02% to $56.97.