NEW YORK: World stocks pared gains on Thursday as discouraging US housing and factory data weighed on Wall Street and prompted investors to sell oil and other commodities.
An exception to stocks' listless trend came from the debut of LinkedIn. Shares of the US social networking company, whose site is popular with professionals and job hunters, surged as much as 167 percent in their first day of trading in a scenario that was reminiscent of investors' love affair with Internet stocks in the late 1990s,
European equities closed higher, offsetting slight losses in New York, while the euro, still hampered by Greece's uncertain debt situation, was unable to hold gains on the dollar despite the weak US data.
On Wall Street, stocks edged lower after separate reports showed an unexpected drop in existing home sales in April and regional factory activity grew much more slowly than expected in May. Earlier, data showed weekly applications for unemployment insurance fell more than expected.
‘The trend has been picking up as far as data being a bit weaker than expected,’ said Steve Goldman, market strategist at Weeden & Co in Greenwich, Connecticut.
‘For the markets, there's been a theme change in the past two months. When looking at the data, the expectation was things may be starting to slow down, maybe a move toward defensive names. Global growth seems to be ebbing somewhat.’
The Dow Jones industrial average dipped 2.73 points, or 0.02 percent, to 12,557.45. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 2.17 points, or 0.16 percent, to 1,338.51. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 5.52 points, or 0.20 percent, to 2,809.48.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 0.64 percent.
The MSCI world equity index and the Thomson Reuters global stock index were up around 0.1 percent for the day.
US crude oil dropped 0.9 percent to $99.20 a barrel, weighed by the US data. Copper fell 1 percent following Wednesday's gain of more than 3 percent.
Commodity prices have fallen sharply in May as the dollar's weakness reversed. US crude is down more than 13 percent for the month. The feeling that the commodities' rout was overdone contributed to Wednesday's gains.
Investors in higher risk assets like commodities and equities face the end next month of a Federal Reserve program known as QE2, which has generated a flow of cash that has contributed to rising prices.
EURO STILL UNDER GREEK PRESSURE
Analysts said investors were looking for opportunities to start buying the euro and riskier currencies after recent falls, but sovereign debt concerns kept the single currency pinned below a key 55-day moving average around $1.4295 on trading platform EBS.
The euro edged up less than 0.1 percent to $1.4259 while the US Dollar Index, a gauge of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.1 percent.
A restructuring of Greece's debt seemed to be off the table for now, according to euro-zone sources, lending the whole issue a positive spin. But investors still were not willing to commit to buying the euro's upside.
‘The uncertainty about Greece has kept the euro under pressure,’ said Mary Nicola, currency strategist at BNP Paribas in New York.
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