NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Stocks barely budged at the open Friday, as investors took in a weaker report on durable goods orders and kept an eye on oil prices.
The Dow Jones industrial average (down 70.28 to 10,038.90, Charts), the Standard & Poor's 500 (up 0.62 to 1,108.98, Charts) index and the Nasdaq composite (up 2.87 to 1,889.30, Charts) all stood near unchanged.
Orders for durable goods fell a steeper-than-expected 0.5 percent in August after posting an upwardly revised 1.8 percent gain in July, the Commerce Department reported early Friday. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected orders to fall 0.3 percent, on average.
Crude oil prices dipped modestly early Friday, after rising every session for the last week. Late Thursday, the Department of Energy confirmed that it will soon provide limited crude oil loans from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a means of combating shortages created by Hurricane Ivan.
However, many oil price watchers criticized the proposed amounts as being too small to effectively relieve supply worries.
Light crude for November delivery fell 26 cents to $48.20 a barrel in electronic trading. Brent crude oil prices fell 24 cents to $44.89 a barrel in London.
Due around 30 minutes after the start of trading, existing home sales likely fell to a 6.65 million-unit annual rate in August, from a 6.72 million-unit annual rate in July.
Among early movers, PeopleSoft (PSFT: up $0.55 to $19.80, Research, Estimates) gained around 2 percent after a Financial Times report said that the European Commission was getting ready to OK Oracle (ORCL: up $0.11 to $11.16, Research, Estimates)'s hostile takeover bid for the company.
Treasury prices fell, pushing the 10-year note yield up to 4.05 percent from 4.01 percent late Thursday.
In currency trading, the dollar was little changed versus the yen and euro.
In global trade, Asian-Pacific markets fell, and European bourses were mixed at midday.
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