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Wall St. off to slow start
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July 6, 1998: 10:01 a.m. ET
Stocks open mixed after long weekend, ahead of earnings season
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - U.S. stocks took a slow start to the week as weary investors returned to the market after a long July 4 weekend, facing little economic or corporate news and waiting for the start of the second-quarter earnings reporting season.
Shortly before 10 a.m. the Dow Jones industrial average was 19.68 points lower at 9,005.58. On the New York Stock Exchange, advances barely led declines 1,067 to 1,040 on trading volume of 43 million shares.
The Nasdaq Composite was nearly unchanged, up 0.03 to 1,894.03, and the S&P 500 index fell 0.85 to 1,145.57.
The bond market traded higher following overnight gains in the dollar against the Japanese yen. The benchmark 30-year Treasury bond rose 10/32 of a point in price, lowering the yield to 5.57 percent.
The dollar rose against the yen after Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto denied he was about to introduce permanent tax cuts, a measure that is widely seen by international investors as a key to jump starting Japan's receding economy. The dollar posted small losses against the German mark.
In stocks, investors had little news to trade on after the long holiday weekend, and many remained on the sidelines, awaiting the first second-quarter earnings reports to start hitting the market.
Among the day's few big movers, shares of Internet search engine Lycos (LCOS) surged 9-21/32 to 88-23/32 after the company announced a 2-for-1 stock split. Other Internet related issues also rallied, with Yahoo! (YHOO) rising 6 to 178-7/8 and Amazon.com (AMZN) gaining 3-1/8 to 127-1/8.
Also in the news, shares of upscale retailer Saks Fifth Avenue (SKS) fell 1/4 to 28-3/4 following news retail chain Proffitt's (PFT) is buying the company for $2.14 billion. 
-- by staff writer Malina Poshtova Zang
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