U.S. stocks fell, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s ending two days of gains, after Secretary of State John Kerry said the president will hold Syria’s government accountable for using chemical weapons.
The S&P 500 declined 0.4% to 1,656.78 at 4 p.m. in New York, erasing an earlier gain of as much as 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 64.05 points, or 0.4%, to 15,946.46.
“If there’s going to be turmoil and then if there’s going to be some retaliation and affect U.S. assets, people get a little scared,” Frank Ingarra, head trader at Greenwich, Connecticut-based NorthCoast Asset Management LLC, said in a phone interview for Bloomberg. “It’s a bit of a pullback so people are probably taking some risk off the table.”
Stocks rebounded last week after a data showing a decline in sales of new homes eased concern that the Federal Reserve would reduce stimulus efforts next month. Officials have been weighing whether the economy is strong enough to implement a reduction in stimulus, which has boosted the S&P 500 up as much as 153 percent from its March 2009 low.
Archer-Daniels-Midland slumped 4.9% to $34.50, while Kraft Foods Group Inc. declined 1.4% to $52.08, the lowest since May. Temperatures will average as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit above normal during the next seven days, with little rain expected in the Midwest, T-Storm Weather LLC said in a note to clients today. Rainfall in July and August will be the least since 1936 in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.
Facebook Inc. rose 2% to $41.34. The market value of the world’s largest social network topped $100 billion at the close for the first time since its initial public offering in May 2012. The stock has more than doubled since falling to a record low of $17.73 in September.
Amgen gained 7.7% to a record $113.75 for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. The pharmaceuticals maker agreed to pay $125 a share for Onyx’s outstanding stock, the companies said in a statement yesterday. Onyx’s Kyprolis, approved last year for a rare blood cancer, may spur more than $3 billion in revenue by 2021, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Onyx jumped 5.6% to $123.49.
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. soared 1.4% to $91.02. The oil explorer said in a statement yesterday it agreed to sell a 10% stake in a Mozambique gas field to ONGC Videsh Ltd., a unit of India’s biggest energy explorer, for $2.64 billion.
TradingPedia.com is a financial media specialized in providing daily news and education covering Forex, equities and commodities. Our academies for traders cover 
