NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Stocks were mixed early Friday as rising oil prices offset a bounce in blue chips after several down sessions.

The Dow Jones industrial average (down 6.72 to 10,626.35, Charts) gained a few points, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 (up 2.14 to 1,190.21, Charts) index and the Nasdaq composite (up 0.67 to 2,016.42, Charts) both hovered near unchanged around 10 minutes into the new session.

Stocks meandered Thursday as oil prices see-sawed, briefly touching new all-time highs before retreating by the close.

Investors continued to keep an eye on oil prices Friday.

U.S. light crude oil for April delivery rose 28 cents to $56.68 a barrel in electronic trading.

Friday is apt to be volatile for several reasons.

The first factor is the quadruple options expiration, a quarterly event in which stock index futures and options, and individual stock futures and options all expire simultaneously. It can lead to wild gyrations in the prices in the underlying stocks as investors either exercise their positions or roll them forward at the last minute.

Friday is also likely to be volatile as Standard & Poor's begins to rebalance a number of indexes, including the S&P 500, to reflect the number of publicly traded shares a company has available, rather than overall shares.

This is the first step in a move by S&P that won't be completed until September.

Shortly after the open, investors get the first read on March consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan. The sentiment index likely rose to 95.3, according to economists surveyed by Briefing.com. It stood at 94.1 in February.

Treasury prices slipped in the early going, raising the 10-year note yield to 4.49 percent from 4.46 percent late Thursday. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

In currency trading, the dollar rose versus the euro and yen.

COMEX gold fell $2.10 to trade at $437 an ounce, falling with other dollar-traded commodities.

In global trade, Asian stocks ended higher Friday, and European markets rose at midday.