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Dow Jones Beats Nasdaq, This Sector Gets Trampled; Transportation Firm Plunges 27%

The Dow Jones industrial average eked out a small gain of roughly 0.3% on Thursday as investors preferred to pick up shares in automaker, oil and gas, insurance and defensive food sectors. Yet, overall the action in stocks today was relatively muted.


While the Nasdaq composite lagged the Dow Jones industrials with a 0.4% loss, volume fell vs. the prior session, according to early data.

This implied that the big hitters on Wall Street — namely mutual funds, banks, hedge funds, pensions, insurers and endowments — weren't overly eager to dump stocks.

On the 30-stock blue chip Dow industrials, seven members gained 1 point or more, including Apple (AAPL), Procter & Gamble (PG), 3M (MMM) and Leaderboard stock McDonald's (MCD).

Hamburger chain McDonald's broke out of a long saucer with handle base in October, running past a 172.10 buy point. The megacap retail play is extended beyond the 5% buy zone.

Crude oil futures soared on Thursday. West Texas Intermediate futures climbed 3.6% to $53 a barrel. It hit that price level for the first time in nearly a week. The big rise helped oil and gas pipeline, international oil exploration and production, and oil refining shares lead the market up.

Saudi Arabia reportedly aims to reduce its supply to key oil refiners in a bid to reduce the glut of U.S. crude.

The S&P 500 edged fractionally lower. A sell-off in logistics, airline, transportation equipment, truck, ship transport and RV firms blunted the large cap index's advance.

This Sector Gets Run Over By Sellers

The Dow Jones transportation average fell 1.6%.

XPO Logistics (XPO) plunged more than 27% and hit a new multiyear low. Volume soared past 38 million shares, more than a third of its float of 107 million shares.

The company noted in an SEC filing that it reaffirmed a free cash flow forecast of $625 million in 2018.

The S&P SmallCap 600 sank 1.5%.

Please follow Chung on Twitter at @IBD_DChung for more on growth stocks, chart analysis, breakouts, sell signals and financial markets.

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