STOCKS FALL: Here's what you need to know
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Stocks closed red on Wednesday and the S&P 500 lost its gains for the month of August. Year-to-date, the index is still up about 6%.
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First, the scoreboard:
- Dow: 18,397.43, -56.87, (-0.31%)
- S&P 500: 2,170.36, -5.76, (-0.26%)
- Nasdaq: 5,215.21, -7.78, (-0.15%)
- WTI crude oil: $44.70, -$1.65, (-3.5%)
- Brazil's Dilma Rousseff was impeached as president. Senators voted 61 to 20 to impeach her for hiding the country's faltering economy during an election year in order to win another term in 2014. Michel Temer, her former vice president, will serve as interim president until 2018. The Brazilian real firmed against the dollar by -0.53% to 3.2234.
- Crude oil sank after a huge inventory build. West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell to a two-week low after the Department of Energy reported inventories rose last week by 2.3 million barrels, more than the 1.1 million barrels that economists had forecast.
- The Department of Justice filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Deere's planned purchase of Monsanto's Precision Planting business. The government's suit in Chicago Federal Court said the deal would remove competition and raise costs for farmers, Bloomberg reported. Deere, the largest maker of agricultural machinery, agreed to buy the unit in November to give farmers real-time planting data.
- In economic data, pending home sales rose more than expected in July, by 1.3% month-on-month. Sales fell 2.2% year-on-year (2.2% forecast). The pending home sales index in the West rose to the highest since June 2013, lifted by a strong jobs market.
- The Chicago Purchasing Manager's Index fell more than expected to 51.5 in August. "Economic activity slowed down into the summer, suggesting June's momentum was only a temporary revival in activity," said Lorena Castellanos, senior economist at MNI Indicators, in the report.
- Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, is in recession for the first time in 20 years. Gross domestic product shrank 2.06% in the second quarter, following a 0.36% decline in the first quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said. The oil crash hurt economic growth.
- Canada had its worst quarter since the financial crisis. Statistics Canada said real GDP fell 0.4% in Q2 after rising by 0.6% in Q1.
Additionally:
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