NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Stocks slid Thursday morning, with investors retreating after the previous session's big advance, in which the Dow carved out a fresh 4-1/2 year high.

The Dow Jones industrial average (up 68.11 to 11,137.17, Charts), the Standard & Poor's 500 (up 9.64 to 1,292.67, Charts) index and the Nasdaq composite (up 20.21 to 2,283.17, Charts) all declined modestly in the early going.

Stocks jumped Wednesday on a mix of falling oil prices and lower Treasury bond yields. But the tone Thursday was more negative.

Declines were broad based, but modest, with 25 out of 30 Dow stocks in the red. Component Merck (unchanged at $35.92, Research) was the only one to lose more than 1 percent.

Among other movers, Viacom (unchanged at $41.90, Research) lost 1 percent after reporting lower quarterly profit late Wednesday. The media company also issued fiscal 2006 earnings guidance below current estimates.

Supporting sentiment was a drop in oil prices. U.S. light crude oil for April delivery fell 24 cents to $60.77 a barrel in electronic trading, ahead of the weekly oil inventories report, due out around 10:30 a.m. ET.

Investors also took in the weekly jobless claims report, which showed a surprisingly large drop in the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment last week.

Treasury prices slipped, raising the yield on the 10-year note to 4.55 percent from 4.52 percent late Wednesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

In currency trading, the dollar was weaker versus the euro and the yen.

COMEX gold for April delivery added 20 cents to $556.80 an ounce.

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