NEW YORK — A surprisingly weak retail-sales report drove stocks lower Tuesday, giving the Dow Jones industrial average its second straight day of losses.
The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.3 percent in January, the smallest increase since June and half of what economists had predicted.
Kim Caughey Forrest, equity-research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, said higher prices for gasoline and raw materials are beginning to be passed along to consumers. That’s hurting retail sales and spending, she said.
“Without wage gains,” she said, “people are going to buy less.”
Energy companies led the way down. Exxon Mobil lost 2.3 percent, the largest drop among the 30 large companies that make up the Dow. Exxon Mobil said it added 3.5 billion barrels of oil and gas last year to the company’s massive reserves, more than twice what Exxon produced in 2010.
The Dow fell 41.55, or 0.3 percent, to close at 12,226.64. That’s only the third day this month the Dow has closed lower.
The decline in retail sales dragged the Standard & Poor’s 500 down 4.31, or 0.3 percent, from a 32-month high to a close of 1,328.01. The Nasdaq composite fell 12.83, or 0.5 percent, to 2,804.35.
“It’s quite simple — people are trying to discern between weather conditions and economic momentum,” said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist at RidgeWorth Capital Management in Richmond, Va. “There’s been some confusion about the impact of the weather on the overall figures, as we saw with retail sales today. That adds up to some nervousness following a strong advance for stocks.”
Money managers are more bullish on global stocks this month than at any time in the past decade, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research survey showed. A net 67 percent of respondents, who together manage $569 billion, had an “overweight” position on global equities, the highest level since the survey first asked the question in April 2001. That compares with 55 percent in January and 40 percent in December.
