month contract, rose 6 cents to settle at $65.71 a barrel, after earlier climbing as high as $66.10 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was just $1 a barrel below the record NYMEX crude futures price of $67.10 reached on Aug. 12. Trading was moderate on the New York Stock Exchange, where decliners beat advancers by a ratio of about 5 to 4, with about 1.28 billion shares changing hands, down from the 1.46 billion daily average for last year. On Nasdaq, decliners also outnumbered advancers by a ratio of about 5 to 4, with about 1.37 billion shares changing hands, down from the 1.81 billion daily average last year. --SP 2356 Local Time 2056 GMT
