Blue-chip shares recouped some losses, but stocks were mostly lower yesterday despite some hints of calm in the latest outbreak of global financial jitters.
Broader stock measures were mixed, with smaller company shares failing to recover from the market's early-afternoon slide. Declining stocks outnumbered advancers by a slim margin on all major US exchanges.
The worldwide stock turmoil continued to benefit the Treasury bond market, where interest rates flirted with another 21-month low as investors gravitated towards the perceived safety of US government securities.
The Labour Department reported that workplace productivity - a pivotal counterbalance to rising production costs and inflation - shot up at an annual rate of 4.5 per cent from July to September, the biggest quarterly improvement in more than five years.
The report also said unit labour costs - which typically account for two-thirds of a product's price - fell at a 0.3 per cent rate. It was the first decline since April-June 1994, indicating little inflation pressure.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a narrow margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,440 up, 1,512 down and 492 unchanged.
NYSE volume totalled 642.34 million shares as of 4pm, as against 584.63 million in the previous session.
The Standard and Poor's 500-stock list rose 10.69 to 916.65, and the NYSE composite index rose 3.76 to 480.69.
The Nasdaq composite index rose 16.02 to 1,557.74, snapping a five-session losing streak that had trimmed the technology-laden measure by nearly 6 per cent.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies slipped 0.05 to 423.39, and the small-company dominated American Stock Exchange composite index fell 1.18 to 666.86.
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