Wall St up, Euro markets down as Greek deadline looms

Traders Fred Demarco, left, and Joseph Chirico, right, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. File photo / AP.

Wall St was up overnight, but European stock markets fell as investors waited for any news around the result of last minute Greece debt bailout talks.

Europe's Stoxx 600 Index ended the session with a 1.3 percent slide from the previous close. That brought its quarterly drop to 4 percent, according to Bloomberg. Germany's DAX fell 1.3 percent, the UK's FTSE 100 Index declined 1.5 percent, and France's CAC 40 Index retreated 1.6 per cent.

"The market is just hinging on anything that comes out," Mark Kepner, managing director, sales and trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey, told Reuters. "It all depends by the hour who says what."

Wall Street moved higher following the previous day's plunge on the uncertainty surrounding a potential Greek default and exit from the euro.

In late trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.29 percent, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 0.50 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.71 percent. Even so, the key indices are set to end the month of June with losses.

"The returns we've all had in the past three to five years are in the rear-view mirror," John Fox, director of research at Fenimore Asset Management in Cobleskill, New York, told Bloomberg. "Things are pretty flat, which makes sense after 2013 and 2014. Our stocks are trading at 100 percent fair value."

Advances in shares of Walt Disney and those of DuPont, each up 1 percent recently, led the gains in the Dow.

Meanwhile, the latest US economic data were upbeat. The Conference Board's index of consumer attitudes strengthened with a better-than-expected reading of 101.4 in June, up from 94.6 in May. Separately, the S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas rose 4.9 percent in April from a year ago, the latest sign that the US housing industry is finally turning a corner.

"The housing market has essentially recovered. In those areas where home prices moved too far out of line with underlying regional economic fundamentals, the price recovery is likely to continue to fall short," Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research in New York, told Reuters.

Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer pointed to the improvement in a speech in Oxford.

"The latest monthly data on real consumption provide welcome evidence that consumer demand is rebounding, and that economic activity likely expanded at an annual rate of about 2.5 percent in the second quarter," Fischer said. "In addition, US labour markets have continued to improve."

"There are grounds for optimism that economic growth will be sufficient to promote further gains in labour market conditions," he said. "An important factor working to increase confidence in the inflation outlook will be continued improvement in the labour market."