Print      
Week’s advance is best since Nov.
By Anna-Louise Jackson and Jiayue Huang
Bloomberg News

US stocks closed little changed to finish the strongest weekly advance since November, with gains in technology and consumer shares offsetting declines among commodity producers amid a drop in crude oil. Equities battled back from an opening selloff sparked by the slide in crude, erasing declines by late morning, though struggling to advance all day. “We got overextended to the downside last week, we’ve had a pretty decent bounce off of those oversold levels and now we’re at an overbought condition,’’ said Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities Inc. in Los Angeles. “I’m not surprised to see a pullback yesterday and a continued pullback today.’’ Investors were able to mostly shrug off oil’s biggest drop in a week, with the impact not spreading deeply beyond energy and raw-materials shares, offering further evidence that once-tight market correlations were easing. “The oil situation is really just a supply issue,’’ said Rob Lutts, president of Massachusetts-based Cabot Wealth Management Inc. “The demand for energy is still relatively robust globally. I think investors maybe start focusing on that and pulling away from the concept that low oil prices mean global trouble everywhere.’’