Tuesday's Market Wrap: Stocks Little Changed Once Again

The U.S. stock market has been trading in a tight range in recent days and that trend continued on Tuesday. Early gains were wiped out by the afternoon and the major averages closed modestly higher.

Notable price gainers included Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc VRX, which soared more than 25 percent and Endo International plc ENDP which surged 22 percent after a strong earnings report. Losers included Impax Laboratories IPXL which lost 23 percent after an earnings miss and MaxLinear MXL which fell 21 percent after Q2 earnings.

Major Averages

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 4 points, or 0.02 percent, to 18,533.

The S&P 500 added less than 1 point, or 0.04 percent, to finish at 2,182.

The Nasdaq climbed a little more than 12 points, or 0.24 percent, to 5,225.

Related Link: 5 Stocks Shaken By Earnings In Tuesday's After-Hours Session

Productivity And Unit Labor Costs

The preliminary productivity reading for the second quarter came in substantially less than expected, declining 0.5 percent compared to estimates calling for a gain of 0.5 percent. Productivity levels fell 0.6 percent in the previous quarter.

Unit labor costs jumped 2 percent in Q2 versus an estimate of an increase of 1.7 percent. In the prior period, unit labor costs fell 0.2 percent.

Commodities

The commodity complex was lower on Tuesday, with the Bloomberg Commodity Index falling 0.67 percent.

NYMEX crude oil futures fell 0.60 percent to $42.76 on the session. Brent contracts lost 0.88 percent to $44.99. Natural gas futures fell 4.48 percent and were last trading at $2.63.

Precious metals were higher on Tuesday. COMEX gold futures were last up 0.27 percent to $1,344.90. The SPDR Gold Trust ETF GLD added 0.41 percent to $127.96. Silver futures climbed 0.33 percent to $19.87 on the day. The iShares Silver Trust ETF SLV jumped 0.69 percent to $18.87.

In the grains complex, corn futures fell 0.67 percent on the session to $3.3250 per bushel. Wheat futures were unchanged at $4.1700.

Bonds

Treasury prices were sharply higher. At the close of equities, the iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF TLT was up 0.98 percent to $139.62.

Treasury yields were as follows on Tuesday afternoon: The yield on the 2-Year Note was 0.71 percent. The 5-Year Note was yielding 1.11 percent. The 10-Year Note was last yielding 1.55 percent while the 30-Year Bond yield was 2.25 percent.

Currencies

The U.S. Dollar was slightly lower. The PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish ETF UUP, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of foreign currencies, traded down 0.20 percent to $24.85. The closely watched EUR/USD pair fell 0.19 percent to 1.1116 euros.

Volatility And Volume

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) was slightly higher on Tuesday despite the market remaining largely unchanged. By the close of trading, the VIX was up 1.39 percent to 11.66.

Volume was very light on Tuesday with around 47 million shares of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF SPY trading hands versus a 3-month daily average of just under 95 million shares. Trading in the PowerShares QQQ Trust QQQ was also below average with just 13 million shares trading hands compared to a 3-month daily average of just over 23 million.