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US stocks manage gains despite hit from poor auto sales

New York - US stocks managed small gains on Thursday despite a hit to major automaker from poor sales in May.

Shares of General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler all took hits from the worse-than-expected slowdown across the US auto industry, with Fiat Chrysler the only one of the three to score a net gain for the month.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day a hair higher at 17 789.67 points.

The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.1% to 2 099.33, and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.1% to 4 952.25.

General Motors shares lost 3.4% after reporting an 18% year-over-year fall in sales last month; Ford shares gave up 2.9% on a 5.9% fall in sales.

FCA US, the US unit of Italy's Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, turned in a one percent sales gain but its shares tumbled 1.8%.

US-traded shares of global brewing power AB InBev added to a two-week surge with a 2.2% gain after Bloomberg reported that its merger with SABMiller would soon earn US Justice Department approval after an antitrust review.

That would likely come with divestment commitments and possibly protections for craft brewers threatened by the huge market power of AB InBev, Bloomberg reported.

Chinese online marketplace Alibaba tumbled 7.0% after its largest shareholder, Japan's SoftBank, announced it would sell $7.9bn worth of Alibaba shares to pay down some of its own $106bn debt load.

Alibaba is buying back at least $2.0bn worth of the Softbank-owned shares, while $500m would be sold to an unnamed "major sovereign wealth fund", the Japanese company said.

The announcement weighed on shares of Yahoo, whose most valuable asset is its $31bn stake in Alibaba. Yahoo shares tumbled 3.4%.

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