NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks were mixed on Wall Street, keeping the Standard & Poor's 500 close to its highest in more than seven years, as investors digested the latest round of earnings reports.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 5 points to 13,888 points as of 10:10 a.m. The Standard and Poor's 500 slipped two points to 1,498 points. The Nasdaq composite dropped 20 points to 3,134.
Stocks have been taking a breather so far this week after a January rally pushed them to their highest in more than seven years and close to record levels. Demand was bolstered after lawmakers reached a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" at the start of the year and by reports that have added to evidence showing that the U.S. housing market is recovering and the jobs market is slowly healing.
Homebuilder D.R. Horton gained $1.38 to $22.70 after it said that net income more than doubled as the housing recovery took hold. Improving home prices and better sales bolstered profits. Drugmaker Pfizer rose 63 cents to $27.48 after the company said its fourth-quarter profit more than quadrupled because of a $4.8 billion gain from selling its nutrition business, despite competition from generic drugs hurting sales.
Investor optimism was checked by a report that showed U.S. consumer confidence sank in January to the lowest level in more than a year as Americans fretted about the economic outlook and higher Social Security taxes. The Conference Board said that its consumer confidence index dropped to 58.6 in January, down from a reading of 66.7 in December. The report was published Tuesday at 10 a.m. EST.
Stocks also failed to get much of a lift from a report published before the market opened that showed the U.S. housing market is sustaining its recovery.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 5.5 percent in November compared with the same month a year ago, pushed higher by rising sales and a tighter supply of available homes. The report was published before the market opened.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose by 1 basis point to 1.97 percentage points. The yield on the note, which moves inversely to its price, rose briefly above 2 percent for the first time since April during trading Monday.
Other stocks in the news;
— Ford fell 59 cents despite reporting earnings that beat analysts' estimates. The automaker said that its losses in Europe would be bigger than it had previously forecast. The company's stock has advanced 56 percent in the last six months.
— Seagate Technology, which makes hard disk drives for storage, fell $3.19 to $34.23 after it reported a 13 percent drop in profits as expenses outpaced revenue growth.
— Software company VMware fell $18.90 to $79.41 after it said that it late Monday that it expects first-quarter revenue to come in lower than Wall Street analysts had forecast. The company is also cutting 900 jobs, or about 7 percent of its workforce.
