Wall Street running in place as Harvey turmoil persists

NEW YORK: Wall Street opened little changed on Wednesday despite robust data showing strong second-quarter growth and August job creation.

Markets were in barely in positive territory but oil stocks continued to suffer stress from turmoil wrought by monster storm Harvey.

The downgraded hurricane was headed back toward southeast Texas and made land fall in Louisiana, as the unprecedented flooding has spread.

About 10 minutes into the day's trading, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and broader S&P 500 were both up less than a tenth of a percentage point at 21,874.80 and 2,447.47 respectively.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.3 percent to reach 6,320.61.

Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com said low-volume in the late-summer trading period means Wall Street likely will be "marking time, waiting to see what might unfold on the (geo)political front and the economic front later in the week."

Worries over a North Korean missile test saw stocks sink in early trading Tuesday before rallying as investors went bargain hunting.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the US economy expanded by three percent in the second quarter, the fastest rate since the first quarter of 2015.

Meanwhile, payrolls firm ADP said private employers added 237,000 jobs in August, well above analyst forecasts of 180,000.

With as much as 20 percent of US refining capacity off line due to the hurricane in Texas, an array of oil stocks were lower.

Royal Dutch Shell gave up 0.6 percent while ConocoPhillips and Chevron each lost 0.5 percent and ExxonMobil was down 0.2 percent.