Stocks Closed Lower on Europe Uncertainty

U.S. stocks finished with sizeable losses on Wednesday  on uncertainties over the future of the euro zone ahead of elections in Greece this weekend. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 77.42 points, or 0.62%, to 12,496.38. The S&P 500 Index retreated 9.30 points, or 0.70%, to 1,314.88. The Nasdaq Composite lost 24.46 points or 0.86%, to 2,818.61.

The traveling euro-zone debt crisis will shift from Spain to Italy on Thursday as Europe’s third-largest economy hosts a key bond auction, hoping to stem fears that it might be the next country to require a bailout. The traveling euro-zone debt crisis will shift from Spain to Italy on Thursday as Europe’s third-largest economy hosts a key bond auction, hoping to stem fears that it might be the next country to require a bailout.

An unprecedented land grab for new Web addresses began in earnest on Wednesday with fierce competition for new internet real estate including .app, .blog and .web from applicants hoping to break the near-monopoly of the .com top-level domain. The ambitious plan to liberalise internet addresses attracted 1,930 applications, almost half of them from north America, with Web giants Amazon (AMZN.O) and Google (GOOG.O) applying for dozens of domains including .cloud, .buy and .book.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) must defend against a lawsuit accusing it of letting advertisers secretly track the activity of millions of mobile device users, a federal judge ruled, but Google Inc (GOOG.O) and several other defendants were dismissed from the case.

J.P. Morgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon on Wednesday defended the U.S. banking sector and the big bank’s risk management team, responding to a much-anticipated and sometimes heated interrogation from lawmakers over a $2 billion-plus derivatives trading loss at the financial institution’s U.K. trading unit.