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Byline: NANCY GONDO
NYSE stocks posted small gains Wednesday to end 2003 on a positive note. The Dow industrials inched up 0.3% to a 21-month closing high and the S&P 500 0.2% to close at a 52-week high. Volume edged higher going into New Year's Day. For the year, the Dow gained 25.3%, the S&P 500 26.4%. The small-cap S&P 600 fell 1.6% but ended the year up 37.5%.
Chinese stocks continued their recent uptrend. Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical gapped up 3.10, or 7%, to a 10-year high of 46.26 on triple its average trade. It's the fifth straight up session for the Chinese petroleum product maker. China Petroleum & Chemical, Sinopec's oil refinery unit, gained 2.59 to a new high of 44.41 on double normal volume. Both stocks extended Tuesday's gains, which came after China Petroleum said late Monday it's buying two oil refinery assets in northwestern China from Sinopec for $43 million.
The news helped boost other Chinese industrial stocks. PetroChina added 1.73 to 46.26, its third straight new high, on more than two times its usual turnover. Sinopec Beijing Yanhua, a plastic and resin producer in that country, added 0.87 to a six-year high of 20.82 on its ...