U.S. stocks finished lower on Tuesday, as investors prepare for the end of the Federal Reserve's bond-buying program. The Federal Reserve is scheduled to conclude its bond-buying program in June, which some experts say has been the prominent driver in the stock market's gain since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke first mentioned it last August. In world markets, European stocks ended higher, led by the DAX in Germany rising 0.4 percent, while Asian markets ended mixed, with the Shanghai Composite falling 0.3 percent and the Nikkei in Japan rising 0.2 percent. In U.S. economic news, sales of new U.S. homes rose for a second consecutive month in April, the Commerce Department said, with sales rising a bigger-than-expected 7.3 percent to an annual rate of 323,000, the highest rate since December. Economists had expected a 300,000-unit pace for April. A normal housing market would produce a pace of about 700,000 new-home sales in a month. In company news, shares of Russian internet company Yandex NV rose more than 40 percent Tuesday on Wall Street, the biggest U.S. initial public offering (IPO) in the internet sector since that of Google. Yandex raised $1.3 billion in its IPO on Monday by selling 52.2 million shares for $25 each. On Tuesday the shares rose above $35 in early trading. The U.S. dollar fell versus the euro and versus the yen. Light sweet crude oil for July delivery rose $1.89 to $99.59 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold futures rose $7.90 to $1,523.30 an ounce. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 25.05, or 0.2 percent, to 12,356.21. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1.09, or 0.1 percent, to 1,316.28. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 12.74, or 0.5 percent, to 2,746.16.
