NEW YORK - The Standard & Poor’s 500 index logged a small gain Tuesday on a mixed day for the stock market.
Health-care giant Johnson & Johnson slipped after it warned that pressure to keep prices low would likely mean slightly lower profits than forecast. Delta Air Lines gained after reporting a better-than expected profit in the fourth quarter as fares and traffic rose.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 5.10 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,843.80. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 44.12 points, or 0.3 percent, to 16,414.44. The Nasdaq composite edged up 28.18 points, or 0.7 percent, to 4,225.76.
Company earnings were the main focus for investors Tuesday because there were no major economic releases. So far, the stock market has failed to get a big lift from earnings reports, and investors appear to be assessing the results more critically than they did a year ago.
“Earnings are coming in and, candidly, we’re getting a mixed picture for the fourth quarter so far,” said Jim Russell, an investment director at U.S. Bank.
Stocks pared early gains Tuesday after the S&P 500 approached 1,850.00, a level that has halted the index’s advance three times in the past month. The benchmark gauge reached an intraday record of 1,850.84 last Wednesday.
“In the short-term, continued earnings growth is particularly important,” said James Gaul, a portfolio manager at Boston Advisors LLC, which oversees about $2.5 billion from Boston. “We are no longer cheap, perhaps not even fairly valued at this point. Investor sentiment is quite optimistic. We need some positive news to get us going.”
Shares of Johnson & Johnson, one of the 30 members of the Dow, slipped $1.03, or 1 percent, to $94.03, helping pull the index lower. Another Dow component, Verizon Communications, fell after reporting its earnings.
Among the day’s winners were Dow Chemical and Alcoa.
Dow Chemical rose $2.86, or 6.6 percent, to $45.93 after hedge fund Third Point LLC said Tuesday that it has acquired a significant stake in the company and wants it to spinoff its petrochemicals division.
Alcoa surged 77 cents, or 6.8 percent, to $12.13 after analysts at JPMorgan raised their price target for the stock, predicting Alcoa will benefit from tightening aluminum markets.
After surging almost 30 percent last year, stocks are starting this year in a more subdued fashion. The S&P 500 is down 0.3 percent this month.
In bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.83 percent from 2.82 percent Friday. U.S. markets were closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday.
Among other stocks making big moves:
Delta shares rose $1.01, or 3 percent, to $32.08 after reporting a better-than-expected profit in the fourth quarter as fares and traffic rose. The airline’s president said demand was strong and forecast that profit margins would increase in the current quarter.
Expedia dropped $3.02, or 4.2 percent, to $67.67 after a blog Search Engine Land reported Expedia online visibility fell dramatically and cited actions taken by Google to punish companies that it thinks are trying to game its search algorithms. Officials from Expedia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Information for this article was contributed by Lu Wang and Nick Taborek of Bloomberg News.
Business, Pages 24 on 01/22/2014