Rising Oil Prices Mute Enthusiasm For Increasing Home Sales

The markets traded mixed during the midday as rising crude oil prices muted enthusiasm for better than expected increase in existing home sales. The Dow fell 31 points to 8441 while Nasdaq rose 9 points to 1759.

On the upside

The Food and Drug Administration approved Oculus Innovative Sciences' (Nasdaq: OCLS) skin and wound gel Microcyn as a prescription treatment as well as an over the counter treatment.

Samsung and SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) renewed their cross license agreement for seven years.

National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM) and Suntech Power Holdings (NYSE: STP) will jointly develop and promote photovoltaic technology solutions.

On the downside

Cogdell Spencer (NYSE: CSA) priced its 20 million offering of common stock at $3.50 per share.
Highwoods Properties (NYSE: HIW) will offer 6.1 million shares of common stock at $21.50 per share.
Origin Agritech (Nasdaq: SEED) widened second quarter losses as revenue dropped.

In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of more than 5 to 4 on the NYSE while advancers barely edged out decliners by a slim margin on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks eased a fraction to 499.