A nose dive in biotech shares-a sector behind much of the week’s declines-kept a lid on gains. The Dow advanced 113, to 16,315, the S&P edged down a point to 1,931, while the tech-oriented Nasdaq lost 48 points to 4,687.
The world’s second biggest economy has spooked investors into selling off commodities across the board in recent weeks. On the surface China is guzzling oil. Over the first 7 months of the year, the world’s largest marginal buyer of oil imported a daily average of 6.7 million barrels of crude, according to Energy Aspects. That is nearly 640,000 barrels a day more than was the case in 2014, perhaps the biggest jump since 2011. Yet those imports are coming at the expense of someone else, because the products this crude is refined into are increasingly being re-exported.
Investors are pushing commercial real-estate prices to record levels in cities around the world, fueling concerns that the global property market is overheating. The valuations of office buildings sold in London, Hong Kong, Osaka and Chicago hit record highs in the second quarter of this year, on a price per square foot basis, and reached post-2009 highs in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Sydney, according to industry tracker, Real Capital Analytics.
Listen in for much more in A Wall Street Wrap-up.
