Stocks swung between gains and losses Thursday, then ended right back where they started. With seconds to close, the Standard and Poor’s 500 eked out a gain, finishing 0.02 percent higher.
Stocks rose at the open of trading, echoing a surge in markets in Europe, where the central bank announced a series of moves to jolt the region’s economy to faster growth. Then, as central bank chief Mario Draghi spoke at a news conference, investors started having second thoughts and stocks there sank, as did U.S. markets.
The S&P 500 edged up 0.31 points to end at 1,989.57. The Dow Jones industrial average gave up 5.23 points, less than 0.1 percent, to 16,995.13. It was up as much as 130 points earlier. The Nasdaq Composite gave up 12.22 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,662.16.
The new European Central Bank moves included a cut in interest rates, cheap loans to banks and several new measures, such as targeting corporate bonds in its bond-buying program.
The interest rate paid to commercial banks to store money at the central bank was cut further into negative territory, to minus 0.4 percent from minus 0.3 percent. The aim is to get banks to remove the money and use it to make loans, but it’s an unprecedented and controversial policy.
“The central bank came out all guns blazing,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at currency trader OANDA.
With nearly all companies out with fourth-quarter results, earnings per share for the S&P 500 are now estimated to have fallen 4.2 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to S&P Capital IQ.
In energy trading, U.S. crude oil shed 1.2 percent after jumping 4.9 percent Wednesday.
Tim Courtney, chief investment officer of Exencial Wealth Advisors, thinks the drop played a role in dampening the stock market’s gains for the day.
“When oil falls, it conjures up images of deflation, inventories piling up and China slowing,” he said. For investors to buy more stocks, “they want to see oil markets stabilize.”
Among stocks making big moves, Dollar General rose $8.02, or 11 percent, to $83.23 after the company reported that its fourth quarter profit rose almost 6 percent, topping Wall Street expectations.
U.S. crude shed 45 cents to $37.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, which is used to price international oils, lost $1.02, or 2.5 percent, to $40.05 a barrel.
