NEW YORK (AA) - The stock market opened lower Wednesday amid disappointing data in the U.S. economy.
The Dow Jones fell 55 points to begin the day at 18,867. The S&P 500 was down six points to 2,174, and the Nasdaq dropped 21 points to open at 5,253.
The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures the change in the price of goods sold by manufacturers and is important for overall inflation, remained unchanged in October, the Department of Labor announced earlier Wednesday. The market expectation was a 0.3 percent monthly increase.
The index rose 0.8 percent in October compared to the same month a year ago. However, this also failed to meet the year-on-year expectation of a 1.2 percent increase.
Industrial production in October, in addition, also remained unchanged from the previous month, despite the market expectation of a 0.2 percent rise.
Wall Street closed with gains on Tuesday after crude oil prices jumped around 6 percent in the hope that OPEC could reach a deal to curb output at the end of this month.
The global oil market and investors will be looking for the change in U.S. weekly crude oil and gasoline inventories to be announced later Wednesday.