LITTLE ROCK — U.S. stocks closed mixed Wednesday after a quiet trading day that left the indexes little changed.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 45.57 points, or 0.3 percent, to 13,124.62. It had been up 20 shortly after the opening bell. The Dow had its biggest loss in two weeks Tuesday, falling 68.94 points.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed down 2.63 points, or 0.2 percent, at 1,402.89.
The Nasdaq composite average closed up 1.17 at 3,075.32.
Hewlett-Packard led the Dow lower, sliding 2.2 percent after saying it would combine its printer and personal computer divisions to save money and improve efficiency. Hewlett-Packard is coping with declining sales of personal computers and printer ink as smart phones, tablets and electronic document-sharing gain popularity.
Earlier Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors released a mixed report about the state of the housing market. Sales of previously occupied homes dipped last month, but the sales pace for the winter was the best in five years, the Realtors said. Housing has been dragging on the economic recovery; an oversupply of homes has decimated construction and other trades in many parts of the country.
Without strongly positive or negative news to move the market, stocks meandered sideways for most of the day. John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, said the lack of market-moving events is generally good for stocks. Traders are increasingly confident that the risks hanging over the market from Europe, oil prices and China will blow over, he said.
“If it hasn’t happened today, that means it might not happen tomorrow,” Manley said. “My guess is, no news means a slight upward bias to the market.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.30 percent from 2.36 percent late Tuesday. Gold and crude oil prices rose slightly.
The Dow is still up 1.3 percent this month and 7.4 percent so far this year. Other indexes are up even more for the year: The S&P 500 has gained 11.6 percent; the technology-focused Nasdaq composite 18.1 percent.
In a research report Wednesday, Goldman Sachs analysts urged investors to dump bonds and put money into stocks. The report argues that the weak economic growth in the United States and Europe is not universal, and that the 2010s could be the strongest period for world growth between 1980 and 2050.
It also argues that, while Japan’s two decades of economic stagnation in the 1990s and 2000s are a tempting comparison to what the U.S. and Europe face today, Japanese stocks were far more overvalued before Japan entered its decline.
“We think it’s time to say a ‘long goodbye’ to bonds, and embrace the ‘long good buy’ for equities as we expect them to embark on an upward trend over the next few years,” the report said.
Roughly the same number of stocks rose and fell on the New York Stock Exchange where consolidated volume was a very light 3.5 billion shares.
Business, Pages 22 on 03/22/2012