It was a bumpy final trading day to close out a volatile week on Wall Street. The Dow and S&P; 500 managed to close out with 0.3% gains for the day. The Nasdaq closed down 0.2%. The real event was a spike in the 10-year Treasury yield, which topped 2.5% for the first time since August 2011. The big treasuries sell-off began with Fed Chair Ben Bernanke's press conference two days ago. The equity and bond markets seem worried by the Fed's plan to start pulling back on its quantitative easing program. There were no major economic reports released today.
Oracle (ORCL) weighed on the tech sector with shares falling 9% after its latest quarterly earning report. Excluding items it matched on earnings estimates at 87-cents a share. That was up from 69-cents a year ago, but revenue fell short at $10.9 billion when consensus was for more than $11.1 billion. The company is blaming weak sales in Asia and Latin America. Also of concern is the shift to cloud computing, and competition from companies
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