Stocks struggle after record

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks were mixed Monday morning, as investors took tentative steps one session after the Dow industrials closed at an all-time high.

The Dow Jones industrial average (up 13.41 to 12,975.39, Charts) hovered near unchanged in the early going, briefly hitting a new intraday record and moving close to 13,000 before retreating.

The broader S&P 500 (up 0.33 to 1,484.68, Charts) index was little changed after ending Friday at a 6-1/2-year high.

The Nasdaq (Charts) composite was also little changed after ending the last session at a 6-year high.

Stocks rose Friday, with the Dow ending at a record high for the third session in a row, thanks to some upbeat earnings.

After such a run, investors were a bit more tentative Monday morning, particularly amid an absence of market-moving earnings reports.

Big names report earnings later in the week, including Amgen and Texas Instruments after the close and AT&T and DuPont Tuesday morning.

The early wave of earnings reports have been better than expected, as is typical, since companies tend to issue conservative forecasts. However, forecasts in the first-quarter were particularly low-key, amid economic uncertainty.

So far, 27 percent of the S&P 500 has reported results. Earnings are currently on track to have risen 5.2 percent from a year ago, according to the latest Thomson Financial estimates.

In the day's biggest deals news, Barclays said it will buy ABN Amro for $91 billion. As part of the deal, ABN would sell its U.S. unit LaSalle Bank to Bank of America for $21 billion in cash. However, ABN said it will hear a counter bid from a group led by Royal Bank of Scotland.

U.S. light crude oil for May delivery rose $1.88 to settle at $63.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Treasury prices slipped, raising the yield on the ten-year note to 4.68 percent from around 4.67 percent late Friday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

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