Earnings Weigh on Stock Market

U.S. stocks ended lower on Wednesday after uninspiring earnings from IBM and Intel, while Chesapeake Energy sank after a Reuters report highlighted that its CEO has taken out large and unusual personal loans. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 82.79 points, or 0.63%, to 13,032.75, led by a 3.5% drop in IBM (NYSE:IBM) shares. Blue-chip Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) fell 1.8%. The S&P 500 lost 5.64 points, or 0.41%, to 1,385.14. The Nasdaq Composite declined 11.37 points, or 0.37%, to 3,031.45.

Aubrey McClendon, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp, has borrowed as much as $1.1 billion over the last three years against his stake in thousands of company wells – a move that analysts, academics and attorneys who reviewed loan documents say raises the potential for conflicts of interest.

U.S. oil major ExxonMobil and Russia’s Rosneft unveiled an offshore exploration partnership on Wednesday that could invest upward of $500 billion in developing Russia’s vast energy reserves in the Arctic and Black Sea.

Verizon Wireless on Wednesday said it will auction a parcel of radio frequencies, which could be worth billions of dollars in an industry scrambling to offer consumers more cellular broadband.

Gold futures ended lower Wednesday as physical demand was seen as lacking and as other commodities and U.S. equities saw red. Gold for June delivery was off $11.50, or 0.7%, to settle at $1,639.60 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was gold’s lowest settlement since April 5.