video transcript

PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS CONVERTED 4:3 MATERIAL No fireworks. Wall Street starts a holiday-shortened week without a bang one-day after posting the best gains of the year. Blue chips were modestly lower, but the rest of the market posted slight gains. Figures from the factory floor are one of the reasons the market lacked the pizzazz of the previous session. The U.S. manufacturing sector shrank for the first time since 2009, according to a survey by the Institute for Supply Management. A big drop-off in new orders was quite noticeable. Talk of a U.S. recession, though, are premature, says Jim Awad of Zephyr Management. SOUNDBITE: JIM AWAD, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ZEPHYR MANAGEMENT (ENGLISH) SAYING: "It's on the table, it's not yet a probability, but what I would say is that if we don't have one, the level of growth is going to be so moderate it's going to feel like a recession. So it's going to feel like a recession whether we technically go into one or not. You're somewhere between 1-1/2 percent growth and zero, or even a little less." The report pushed down expectations for Friday's jobs report and pumped up hopes the Federal Reserve will announce new stimulus before the end of the summer. Bristol-Myers Squibb is still facing a patent headache as it teams up with AstraZeneca to buy Amylin Pharmaceuticals. The $5.3 billion cash deal will beef up the company's diabetes treatments, but does not defend against the loss of patent protection on two big drugs. Shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb closed at a 10-year high. Amylin closed at nearly a four-year high. And AstraZeneca rallied in London. Europe's aerospace giant Airbus will start building A320 planes at a $600 million plant it is building in the U.S. state of Alabama. Back on its home turf, European markets hit two-month highs after an EU bailout deal announced last week. Conway Gittens, Reuters