Dow clings to record

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks struggled Monday morning, with investors holding back one session after the Dow industrials closed at an all-time high and the Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 closed at more than 6-year highs.

The Dow Jones industrial average (down 5.93 to 12,956.05, Charts) hovered near unchanged almost two hours into the session, briefly hitting a new intraday record and moving close to 13,000 before retreating.

The broader S&P 500 (up 0.29 to 1,484.64, 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 (up $0.56 to $62.53, Charts, Fortune 500) and Texas Instruments (down $0.19 to $32.31, Charts, Fortune 500) after the close and AT&T (down $0.22 to $39.65, Charts, Fortune 500) and DuPont (down $0.42 to $48.86, Charts, Fortune 500) 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.

Monday brought its share of deals news.

Barclays (down $1.17 to $58.83, Charts) said it will buy ABN Amro (down $0.63 to $48.66, Charts) 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.

AstraZeneca said it will buy U.S. biotech MedImmune (up $8.62 to $56.63, Charts) in a $15.6 billion all-cash deal. MedImmune shares surged 18 percent and topped the Nasdaq's most-actives list. U.S.-traded shares of AstraZeneca (down $2.48 to $56.56, Charts) slipped 4 percent on bets that the drugmaker was overpaying for MedImmune.

Separately, AstraZeneca said it was ending its partnership with drug developer AtheroGenics (down $0.47 to $3.18, Charts) after a heart disease drug the two companies were developing did not produce desired results in a trial.

Among other movers, Applied Micro Circuits (down $0.78 to $2.75, Charts) slumped 20 percent in unusually active Nasdaq trading after the chipmaker warned that both fiscal fourth-quarter revenue and first-quarter revenue would miss estimates.

Market breadth was mixed. On the Nasdaq, winners topped losers 8 to 7 on volume of 440 million shares. On the Nasdaq, decliners edged advancers by a narrow margin on volume of 680 million shares.

U.S. light crude oil for June delivery rose 54 cents to $64.65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

COMEX gold for June delivery fell $4.20 to $691.60 an ounce.

Treasury prices rose, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 4.66 percent from 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.