Wall Street ends flat post Bernanke comments

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of Federal Reserve said that, “The committee is maintaining a highly accommodative policy. We decided to keep the target fund range for Fed fund rate at 0-0.25%, we continue to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of Fed fund rates at least through 2014.”

“In addition the committee decided to continue through the end of the year program of lengthening the maturity of our securities holdings rather that completing the program this month as previously scheduled. Specifically the committee intends to purchase treasury securities with maturities of 6 yrs-30 yrs at the current pace and to sell or redeem an equal amount of treasury securities with maturities of approximately 3 years or less.”

Dow Jones Industrial Average closed flat at 12824.39. Nasdaq Composite ended at 2930.45, while Standard & Poor's 500 closed down at 1355.69.

In key economic data to watch out for in US today, weekly jobless claims is expected to come in lower at 383000 compared to 386,000 last week.

The PMI manufacturing flash index for June could be marginally lower at 53.8 compared to 53.9 in May. A level over 50 indicates monthly growth.

A downtick is expected in May existing home sales as well. Consensus estimates it at 4.57 million units after the 3.4% rise in April to 4.62 million.

The conference board's index of leading indicators is seen at 0 in May compared to a -0.1% reading in April.

In other asset classes, the dollar holds above 81 levels. The euro is stable above 1.26.

But Brent crude prices nosedive below USD 93 dollars, Nymex crude falls to 81 dollars, it’s lowest since October.

Gold prices too slipped to 1600 levels after no additional easing was announced by the Fed.