NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. stock markets showed little response Tuesday to the release of the details of President Bush's broad-reaching economic plan, only one session after rallying in anticipation of the news.

Wednesday brings little new corporate or economic news, leaving market participants to continue to chew on the President's proposal.

In addition, on Wednesday, Alcoa (AA: Research, Estimates) will become the first Dow component to report its results for the December quarter. The aluminum company is expected to have earned 25 cents per share, up sharply from the 11 cents earned a year earlier.

But technology shares could suffer a little after personal computer maker Gateway warned after the close of trade that results in its fourth quarter will miss current estimates. The firm expects to see a loss of between 18 cents and 19 cents a share, when analysts currently expect only a loss of 14 cents per share.

The Nasdaq composite (Charts) closed Tuesday 10.25 points higher, at 1,431.57, while the Dow Jones industrial average (Charts) ended 32.98 points lower at 8,740.59 and the S&P 500 index (Charts) lost 6.08 points to close at 922.93.

All the major market indexes spent the day bouncing in and out of positive territory, failing to find definite direction, even after Bush delivered his stimulus speech in the early afternoon.

"The markets pretty well anticipated the context of President Bush's proposals," said Bill Sullivan, economist at Morgan Stanley. "The euphoria is over and now the cold reality of Washington politics will dominate."

Bush revealed the details of his economic plan, which will total about $674 billion over 10 years, in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. The plan would speed overall income tax reduction, create incentives for small businesses to expand, send up to $3,000 in cash to help unemployed people find work and eliminate taxes on dividend income.

Stocks, especially those with high dividend yields, could benefit from Bush's proposal, as was evident Monday when the market shot sharply higher as details of the Bush plan became known.

But whether such a proposal has a chance of getting approved in its entirety is questionable, especially since congressional Democrats have proposed a smaller, more immediate package, opening the door for debate on Capitol Hill.

"Eliminating the dividend tax is an extraordinarily controversial measure -- even Republican support may not be as deep as assumed," Morgan Stanley's Sullivan added.

At just 1.7 percent the dividend yield on the S&P 500 is, with the exception of the latter portion of the bubble years, about as low as it's ever been and well below its average of 3.6 percent over the past half century. There is no shortage of Wall Streeters who think that companies should be handing out dividends more freely. Some hope that cutting the dividend tax will help pry corporate fingers away from the cash box and lead to higher payouts.

But a closer look reveals that dividend payouts are not that far from historic norms at all. For 2002, dividends for companies in the S&P 500 look to come in at 57.5 percent of earnings under generally accepted accounting principles, according to Standard & Poor's. The average since 1950: 57.3 percent.

So how does that square with the low dividend yield? It's all about valuations. Since 1950 the price-to-earnings ratio on the S&P has averaged 16.2. Right now the S&P is trading at about 29 times estimated 2002 earnings. So maybe the problem isn't that dividends are so low but that stocks cost so much.

Of course it may be that earnings are unnaturally low, noted Cliff Asness, managing principal at the hedge fund AQR Capital. "If earnings come back, I don't think companies are going to pay out more," he said. "But I also think stock prices are still high."

Amid the focus on Bush's speech and little new corporate news, few individual stocks were real standouts.

Among the few noteworthy movers, shares of data storage specialist EMC (EMC: up $0.67 to $7.47, Research, Estimates) jumped nearly 10 percent. The company said late Monday that its fourth-quarter revenue and earnings per share will top previous expectations. Merrill Lynch more than doubled its 2003 earnings estimate for EMC to 12 cents a share from 5 cents on the report.

Shares of both IBM (IBM: Research, Estimates) and Cisco (CSCO: Research, Estimates) rose after IBM said that it will sell data storage switches recently introduced by Cisco Systems, in an attempt to beef up its product lineup. Financial terms of the deal were not announced.

A few other heavily weighted stocks on the Nasdaq drifted higher, pulling the composite up, with Oracle (ORCL: Research, Estimates) and JDS Uniphase (JDSU: Research, Estimates) showing some strength.

Shares of Philip Morris (MO: Research, Estimates) rose after the company said it is changing the way it discounts cigarettes to retailers, a move that falls short of a list-price cut. Rumors and analyst notes speculating that a list-price cut would be announced had pressured the stock on Monday.

Market breadth was negative. On the New York Stock Exchange, losers beat gainers 10 to 7 on volume of 1.18 billion shares. On the Nasdaq, decliners edged advancers 9 to 8 with around 1.75 billion shares trading.

Treasury prices drifted higher, following a volatile path throughout the day. The benchmark 10-year note added 6/32 of a point in price for a yield of 4.03 percent. The dollar gained some ground against the euro and rose even more against the yen.

Light crude oil fell $1.02 to $31.08 a barrel in New York as reports surfaced that Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members plan to increase their daily output. Gold also declined after hitting nearly six-year highs in the previous session, slipping to $347.70 an ounce in New York.