US equity markets settled with modest losses, relinquishing earlier gains in the final hour of trading that saw both the Dow and Nasdaq touch fresh record intra-day highs - Dow lost -69-points or -0.22%, having been up over >150-points earlier in the session and logging a fresh record intra-day high (31,223.78). Intel Corporation gained +4.04%, buoyed by a number of analyst upgrades after it was announced a day earlier that Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bob Swan would step down effective 15 February, with VMWare Inc (+1.76%) CEO Pat Gelsinger to step into the role. The broader S&P500 fell -0.38%, with Information Technology (down -0.95%) leading seven of the eleven primary sectors lower. Energy returned to the top of the primary sector leaderboard with a +3.01% gain. The Nasdaq slipped -0.12% after scaling a fresh record intra-day peak (13,220.16) earlier in the session. Facebook Inc fell -2.38%, while Amazon.com Inc (-1.21%), Netflix Inc (-1.36%), Microsoft Corp (-1.53%) and Apple Inc (-1.51%) all declined by more than >1%. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 index rallied +2.05%. In merger and acquisition (M&A) news, Cisco Systems (down -0.46%) after CNBC reported that it was proposing a higher bit for Acacia Communications
