By Greg Peel

The Dow closed down 15 points or 0.1% while the S&P was flat at 1325 and the Nasdaq lost 0.4%.

Wall Street was going nowhere last night following Tuesday night's big rally, having now positioned itself ahead of potentially game-changing developments on either side of the Atlantic. Having posted a strong result after the bell on Tuesday, Apple shares closed up 2.7% but failed to ignite further general buying.

Optimism is growing in Europe that this time officials will not simply fiddle about at the edges but dive right into the core of the eurozone debt problem. President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel met last night ahead of tonight's meeting of leaders in Brussels and this was taken as a positive sign.

Apparently under consideration in Brussels is a much larger European Financial Stability Fund than the one put in place last year which would be able to buy back sovereign bonds and extend lines of credit to struggling eurozone members. Another proposal is a tax on holders of Greek bonds which would raise sufficient funds to prevent default. Behind all considerations is the supposed unmovable reality that the ECB cannot hold defaulted debt as collateral, and that ratings agencies are expected to call a partial default a default.

Hopefully tonight will bring a grand, market-saving announcement, but then European leaders are not known for their expedient agreements.

In the meantime, confidence has grown that a debt ceiling agreement can be reached in the US and discussions have begun anew, with a potential announcement touted for Sunday. However as I noted yesterday, any resolution still has to make it through the House. And just in case we thought it might be smooth sailing, last night the Republican majority House approved a bill that would raise the debt ceiling but enforce deep budget cuts and enforce budget balancing, which has been called the "Cut, Cap and Balance" bill. President Obama has indicated he would immediately veto.

We are still in for a bloody battle.

On the economic front, Tuesday night's excitement over the May housing starts number gave way to disappointment over last night's June existing home sales number. It fell for the third month in a row, by 0.8% to 4.77m units which was down from 4.81m units in May. Economists had expected an increase to 4.90m units.

On the earnings front, all the action was after the bell as four large caps rolled out their results. All four of Qualcomm, American Express (Dow), eBay and Intel (Dow) beat expectations.

However all four did not necessarily receive a positive response. Qualcomm shares are down 3% in the after-market, Amex is down 0.7%, eBay is down 1.8% and Intel is down 1.7%. While analysts spend time scrutinising constituent numbers, one suspects these stocks had a good run yesterday on heightened expectations.

But back to the day session, where gold's brief sell-off on Tuesday on supposed risk relief was just that. Gold ran back up US$13.10 to US$1601.90/oz as no doubt enough buyers decided we're not out of the woods yet. The euro was stronger, sending the US dollar index down another 0.4% to 74.84, and the Aussie was steady at 1.0746.

Oil continued to gain, with Brent rising US$1.09 to US$118.15/bbl and West Texas US71c to US$98.09/bbl, but base metals took a breather after Tuesday's solid gains and showed average falls of around 1%.

The SPI Overnight is down 7 points or 0.15%.

It's a big night tonight for US earnings reports, with highlights being AT&T (Dow), Microsoft (Dow), Morgan Stanley, Travelers (Dow) and economic bellwether Union Pacific. But dominating global markets will be developments in Europe and possible new news out of the US on the small matter of debt.

Rudi will not be making his regular appearance on Sky Business today as he is holding presentations in Queensland, but in a rare treat Rudi will be delivering the Overnight Report tomorrow morning as I head to Queensland.

It's a shame to leave the Sydney weather.