The Overnight Report: Greek Dance
By Greg Peel
The Dow closed down one point while the S&P was flat at 1316 and the Nasdaq fell 0.3%
There are all sorts of troubles in Tech Land, with the Nasdaq last night's worst performer following Monday's big Apple-led rally. Not only did PC-maker Dell post a big earnings miss, which has that stock down 11% after hours, Farcebook (aka Faceplant) dropped another 9% as more controversy erupted over who knew what and when.
Back in the real world, the early news was a 3.4% rise in US existing home sales in April to the highest level in almost two years. The median sale price rose to US$177,400 (yes I know ? wouldn't buy a phone box in Blacktown) which is up 10% year on year. Evidence has shown the rate of US foreclosures has been slowing and while 28% of April's numbers represented foreclosure sales, that's down from 29% in March.
The numbers underpin a growing belief that the US housing market may have truly begun to recover, albeit from a very low base. Homebuilder stocks led Wall Street higher, pushing the Dow up by 70 points by late morning before it stumbled along to be up about 50 points at 3pm. Then it fell off a cliff.
Comments hit the wires from former Greek prime minister George Papademos that a Greek exit from the eurozone would be a catastrophe and that right now exit preparations are underway in Greece. On that news the Dow fell 100 points in a heartbeat.
Tonight sees an "informal" meeting of EU leaders, at which "what to do about Greece" will be a hot agenda topic. It would be na