The nonchalance of Carl Icahn in his Tuesday evening CNBC interview, as he was handed and then proceeded to sip on a martini, was of no solace to investors in Wednesday’s trading session, as stocks slipped across the board by the closing bell.
While the Dow and S&P ended only modestly lower, the NASDAQ was dragged further asunder by tech shares, as companies throughout the sector pared back gains from previous sessions.
Ahead of a much-anticipated earnings statement from Apple (AAPL) , economic data in the form of drastically lower housing sales for the month of March, an anemic preliminary reading on US manufacturing, and poor results from AT&T (T) and Amgen (AMGN) held the broader market back.
Results for April 23, 2014
? Standard & Poor’s 500: -0.22 percent to 1,875.39
? NASDAQ: -0.83 percent to 4,126.97
? Dow Jones Industrial Average: -0.08 percent to 16,501.65
Our Top Stories
? Senior Editor Joel Anderson breaks down options-investing.
? Tim Melvin helps readers avoid being taken for a ride in the thick of earnings season.
? Senior Editor Michael Teague provides a quasi-psychoanalytic analysis of Silicon Valley’s newest escape vehicle Tsunamiball in the context of the new tech bubble many have been warning of.
? As a reminder of the growing importance of offshore oil and gas production, readers should have a look at this National Geographic documentary about Royal Dutch Shell’s ($RDS.A) Gulf of Mexico Perdido well.
? A handy infographic detailing seven basic mistakes made by retirement-investors.
Stocks
? Some of the components of Equities.com’s Small-Cap Stars index, including Plug Power (PLUG) , are handily outperforming the broader small-cap market in 2014, and this despite the recent downturn in growth-stocks.
? Senior Editor Jacob Harper revisits breakout micro-cap tech stocks.
? A reminder that three IPOs were rescheduled from last week to the current one: Scynexis ($SCYX), Quotient ($QTNT), and Aldeyra Therapeutics ($ALDX).