NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
U.S. stocks ended the session little changed Wednesday, with investors keeping the market in a tight range one session after pushing the Dow and the S&P 500 index to their highest levels in nearly 19 months.
The Dow Jones industrial average (up 15.70 to 10145.26, Charts) and the Standard & Poor's 500 (up 1.35 to 1076.48, Charts) index both gained a little more than 0.1 percent, while the Nasdaq composite (down 2.96 to 1921.33, Charts) closed down 0.15 percent.
"The market has been in a lateral consolidation for the last six to eight weeks, and we're seeing a continuation of that," said Scotty George, chairman of du Pasquier Asset Management. "Having broken through some technical resistance levels, it is appropriate that there has been some profit-taking. But the general trend of the market remains positive longer-term."
The combination of a natural pullback from Tuesday's rally, the continued weakness in the U.S. dollar and traders' maneuvers ahead of Friday's "quadruple witching" day all kept the market circling the break-even line for most of Wednesday.
Quadruple witching refers to the day when stock index futures, stock index options and individual stock futures and options all expire simultaneously. Ahead of this, it is not uncommon to see wild gyrations in prices in the underlying stocks.
Some of the jitters seemed to take the shine off the day's upbeat earnings reports from a pair of brokerages and a stellar debut for the biggest initial public offering of the year.
Two more brokerages are due to report earnings Thursday morning, Goldman Sachs (GS: Research, Estimates) and Morgan Stanley (MWD: Research, Estimates). According to First Call estimates, Goldman is forecast to have earned $1.54, up from 98 cents a year earlier, while Morgan Stanley is expected to have earned 90 cents, up from 81 cents a year earlier.
Before-hours economic reports on employment, manufacturing and leading indicators are also likely to influence trade Thursday.
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment is forecast to have fallen last week to 365,000 from 378,000 the previous week, according to a Briefing.com survey of economists.
The index of leading economic indicators is forecast to show a rise of 0.3 percent in November, after rising 0.4 percent in October. The Philadelphia Fed index, a regional manufacturing survey, is expected to have declined to 25.0 in December from 25.9 in November.
What's moving?
The period of reporting fourth-quarter earnings got off to a mixed start. Brokerages Bear Stearns (BSC: up $2.10 to $76.60, Research, Estimates) and Lehman Brothers (LEH: down $1.17 to $73.39, Research, Estimates) both reported better-than-expected profit, while electronics retailers Best Buy (BBY: Research, Estimates) and Circuit City (CC: Research, Estimates) delivered weaker results.
"Today, there isn't any economic news, and the earnings news is having an impact on those stocks but not the broader market," said Douglas Altabef, managing director at Matrix Asset Advisors.
Bear Stearns earned $2.19 a share, up from $1.50 a year ago and better than the $1.80 First Call analysts were expecting, while Lehman earned $1.71 a share, up from 69 cents a year earlier and better than the $1.57 expected. The stocks split directions, with Bear Stearns rallying 2.8 percent and Lehman shedding 1.6 percent.
While the news was good for those two, it wasn't particularly surprising, considering the recent strength in the industry, Altabef said.
"It's important in that it continues the sense that there's more mortgage activity, more IPOs," Altabef added.
The IPO market continued to impress. China Life Insurance (LFC: Research, Estimates)'s American depositary shares were the NYSE's most actively traded in the life insurer's first session as a publicly traded company. It raised $3 billion in the year's biggest IPO, and the stock soared to $23.72 from its IPO price of $18.68. It was one of several IPOs debuting Wednesday.
In other news, Best Buy earned 37 cents per share, in line with estimates and up from 27 cents a year earlier, and Circuit City lost 12 cents a share, wider than the 7-cent-per-share loss First Call analysts were expecting and steeper than the 10-cent-per-share loss it posted a year earlier. Best Buy gained 4 percent, but Circuit City tumbled 6.7 percent.
Market breadth was mixed. On the New York Stock Exchange, where 1.39 billion shares traded, winners outnumbered losers by more than nine to seven. On the Nasdaq, decliners edged advancers on volume of 1.47 billion shares.
Treasury prices edged up, pushing the yield on the 10-year bond down to 4.17 percent from 4.21 percent late Tuesday. (Prices and yields move in opposite directions.) The dollar set another all-time low versus the euro before pulling back slightly and also declined against the yen.
Among commodities markets, NYMEX light sweet crude oil futures rallied 44 cents to settle at $33.39 per barrel. COMEX gold gained $4.30 to settle at $412.70 an ounce.
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