The major U.S. stock indexes closed unevenly Thursday after an early rally gave way to a mostly listless day of trading on Wall Street.
Losses in health care stocks mostly offset gains in industrial companies, banks and elsewhere in the market. Insurers UnitedHealth Group and Anthem led the sector's slide. Technology stocks also fell.
The S&P 500 index eked out a tiny gain, adding 0.11 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 2,888.32.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 14.11 points, or 0.1 percent, to 26,143.05. The Nasdaq composite slid 16.88 points, or 0.2 percent, to 7,947.36. The Russell 2000 gave up 2.41 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,579.14.
More stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Major European indexes closed mostly higher.
The quiet day of trading came as investors looked ahead to today, when major banks, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, are due to report their first-quarter results. The banks will pave the way for a potentially market-moving wave of company earnings reports the next few weeks.
"For the better part here of five trading days we've been up and down just a little bit, and not really making any progress," said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. "A lot of that is you're really waiting for earnings season."
Stocks initially moved modestly higher as investors welcomed an encouraging report from the Labor Department, which said applications for unemployment aid declined last week to 196,000, the lowest level since October 1969.
By midmorning, the major stock indexes turned slightly lower, however, and then held steady for much of the day before a late-afternoon flurry of buying left the S&P 500 with a minuscule gain. The index is up 15.2 percent for the year.
The stock indexes' mixed performance Thursday means the market gave back some of the ground it won a day earlier, after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting showed that the majority of officials want to keep interest rates unchanged in 2019. Investors want the central bank to take a more laid-back approach to avoid triggering a market slump.
Beyond the Fed, traders are squarely focused on company earnings reports the next few weeks in hopes of gleaning fresh clues about the trajectory of the economy and corporate profits.
Quarterly results from a couple of companies this week have been encouraging.
Fastenal led gains in industrial stocks Thursday after the maker of fasteners, nails and other hardware delivered better-than-expected quarterly results. The stock climbed 5 percent. Delta led a rally in airline stocks Wednesday after reporting solids results.
Health insurers were among the biggest decliners as the health care sector took heavy losses. UnitedHealth Group fell 4.3 percent, Anthem dropped 4.1 percent, Humana slid 2.2 percent and Cigna lost 2.55. The sector is up 4.8 percent this year, lagging behind the S&P 500's other 10 sectors.
Tesla slid 2.8 percent after news reports that the electric-car-maker would hold off on a key battery plant expansion in the U.S. The stalled expansion follows Tesla's report earlier this month of a first-quarter slowdown in production and demand.
Bed Bath & Beyond, which has been struggling recently and is being targeted by a number of activist investors, slumped 8.8 percent in heavy trading after the company reported a drop in a key sales measure that was worse than analysts were expecting.
Information for this article was contributed by Damian J. Troise of The Associated Press.
Business on 04/12/2019