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U.S. stocks narrowly mixed amid soft data

Xinhua, February 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. stocks traded mixed amid roughly downbeat economic data around midday Thursday, as Wall Street continued to digest Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's remarks on monetary policy in her testimonies.

At noon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 9.89 points, or 0.05 percent, to 18,214.68. The S&P 500 lost 1.87 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,111.99. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 15.36 points, or 0.31 percent, to 4,982.49.

Economic data came in generally negative. U.S. consumer prices in January posted their biggest drop since 2008 as gasoline prices continued to tumble, which could provide ammunition for the Fed to keep interest rates low a bit longer.

The Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers declined 0.7 percent in January on a seasonally adjusted basis, said the U.S. Labor Department Thursday. Analysts had expected the figure to decline 0.6 percent.

"If price declines continue, Yellen and company will find it very difficult to raise rates in the coming quarters," said Jay Morelock, an economist at FTN Financial, in a note.

Meanwhile, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims in the week ending Feb. 21 increased 31,000 from the previous week's revised level to 313,000, exceeding market expectations of 285,000, the Labor Department said Thursday before the opening bell.

However, new orders for manufactured durable goods in January increased 2.8 percent to 236.1 billion U.S. dollars, beating market consensus, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Investors were still sifting through Yellen's comments on monetary policy. Yellen reiterated Wednesday that normalization of interest rates would begin when the committee is confident that inflation is on track to hit the central bank's inflation target of 2 percent growth, during her semi-annual testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services. Endite