NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Stocks were mixed early Wednesday as investors cheered CEO Carly Fiorina's departure from Hewlett-Packard, but worried about Cisco's sales miss.

The Dow Jones industrial average (up 8.87 to 10,724.63, Charts), the Standard & Poor's 500 (up 0.38 to 1,202.68, Charts) index and the Nasdaq composite (up 1.61 to 2,088.29, Charts) all hovered near unchanged around ten minutes into the new session.

Shares of HP (unchanged at $20.14, Research), a Dow component, rallied nearly 9 percent in the early going after Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina was ousted from the printer and computer maker by its board over disagreements about strategy.

Analysts generally said that the move was a good one for the company, and investors seemed to agree, sending the stock higher. (For more on this story, click here.)

In other news, Cisco Systems (down $0.04 to $18.20, Research) reported fiscal second-quarter earnings late Tuesday that rose from a year earlier and met estimates, on sales that below forecasts. Gross margins, a key measure of profitability, also came up short of expectations.

The company, often seen as a bellwether for technology spending, forecast that fiscal third-quarter revenue would be flat to up two percent versus the second quarter, below analysts' current estimates.

Shares edged lower in the early going.

U.S. light crude oil prices for March delivery fell 8 cents to trade at $45.32 a barrel in electronic trading.

Treasury prices fell, pushing the yield on the 10-year note up to 4.03 percent from 4.01 percent late Tuesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

In currency trading, the dollar inched higher versus the euro and yen.

COMEX gold fell $1.70 to trade at $412.60 an ounce.

In global trade, Asian-Pacific markets ended mixed, and European shares were mostly higher at midday.