Wall Street left to wander

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Major indexes moved sideways in midday trade Friday as Wall Street weighed troubling earnings news and weighed the Federal Reserve's next move.

The Dow Jones industrial average (Charts) rose 0.1 percent two hours into the session.

The broader S&P 500 index (Charts) straddled the breakeven point, while the tech-fueled Nasdaq (Charts) gained 0.1 percent.

Stocks retreated after an early gain following remarks by Federal Reserve Gov. Randall Kroszner, who hinted that the central bank may not continue to lower interest even if the economy worsens.

"The current stance of monetary policy should help the economy get through the rough patch during the next year," Kroszner, a voting member of the central bank's policy committee, said in prepared remarks at a conference in New York.

Also hurting stocks was troubling news from package delivery firm FedEx (Charts, Fortune 500), which cut its earnings outlook Friday, citing higher fuel costs and a strained U.S. freight market. FedEx shares eased nearly 5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange.

"There's a lot of negative corporate news out there, let alone the subprime issue keeps haunting the market," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners. "All of these things are being discounted."

Just a session earlier, stocks tumbled on concerns about the health of the U.S. consumer and as more banks, including UBS (Charts) and a unit of Barclays Group (Charts), took more writedowns on risky mortgage debt.

In other corporate news, Starbucks reported strong quarterly results late Thursday, but the coffee retailer trimmed its fiscal 2008 guidance and reported a decline in traffic at its U.S. stores. Starbucks (Charts, Fortune 500) shares plunged nearly 8 percent in Nasdaq trading on the news.

The network equipment company Cisco Systems (Charts, Fortune 500), which said it would expand its share buyback program by $10 billion.

Department store operator Kohl's (Charts, Fortune 500) reported a drop in earnings late Thursday and also cut its earnings outlook.

And chipmaker AMD (Charts, Fortune 500) announced Friday it received a $622 investment from an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm.

On the economic front, industrial production suffered its biggest decline in nine months during the month of October, the Federal Reserve said Friday. The reading came in worse than expected.

Treasury prices rose, lowering the yield on the benchmark 10-year note to 4.15 percent, from 4.16 percent a session earlier.

The dollar eased versus the euro, but was narrowly higher against the yen.

In commodity trading, oil prices moved higher Friday as light, sweet crude for December gained $1.47 to $94.90 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Gold prices move higher as COMEX gold for December gained $3.20 to $790.50 an ounce.

Overseas, markets in Asia finished sharply lower, while stocks in Europe were broadly lower in late afternoon trading.