Stock Opened Mainly Lower ahead of Election

Stocks opened slightly lower on Monday, one day before the U.S. presidential election. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lately fell 34.94 points, or 0.27%, to 13,058.22. The S&P 500 index shed 1.88 points, or 0.13%, to 1,412.32. The Nasdaq Composite rose 4.13 points, or 0.14%, to 2,978.00.

The average U.S. price for a gallon of regular gasoline took its biggest drop since 2008 in the past two weeks, due to lower crude oil prices, a big price drop in pump prices in California and Hurricane Sandy, according to a widely followed survey released on Sunday. Gasoline prices averaged $3.5454 per gallon on November 2, down 20.75 cents from October 19 when drivers were paying $3.7529 at the pump, Lundberg said.

Toyota Motor Corp nudged its full-year net profit forecast up to $9.7 billion, even as it put the cost of recent anti-Japanese protests and a slowing economy in China, the world’s biggest autos market, at lost sales of 200,000 cars. Toyota said on Monday the impact of the drop in sales would cost it 30 billion yen off its full-year net profit. It sold around 900,000 vehicles in China last year.

HSBC has reduced its number of staff by almost 30,000 in the last two years and said more job cuts are likely across the bank to achieve its cost efficiency targets. The bank had 266,700 staff at the end of September, down from 296,000 at the end of 2010 and down about 21,000 this year.

Time Warner Cable Inc, the second largest U.S. cable operator, reported a quarterly profit that missed estimates as a continuing decline in video subscribers offset rising demand for its high- speed internet services. The company lost 140,000 video customers during the third quarter. It added 85,000 internet customers but no phone subscribers in the residential segment.