Washington: Stock indexes wavered between small gains and losses Wednesday as trading on Wall Street turned choppy for the seconds straight day.
The S&P 500 was up less than 0.1 per cent as of 2:22 pm Eastern, after wobbling between a gain of 0.4 per cent and a loss of 0.1 per cent.
Technology and energy companies helped lift the market. Those gains were kept in check by a pullback in retailers and other companies that rely on consumer spending. Communication, industrial and materials stocks also fell.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 23 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 34,600, while the Nasdaq was down 0.2 per cent. Smaller company stocks also fell, pulling the Russell 2000 index 0.1 per cent lower.
Treasury yields were mostly headed lower rising on Tuesday as investors began to look ahead to Friday’s US jobs report, which is expected to show employers added more than 650,000 jobs last month.
Expectations that the upcoming Labour Department report will show a strong increase in hiring have added to worries about inflation and how the Federal Reserve may respond to it.
The concern is that the global recovery could be hampered if governments and central banks have to withdraw stimulus to combat rising prices.
Bond yields edged lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped to 1.60 per cent from 1.61 per cent late Tuesday.
Technology companies were doing much of the heavy lifting for the benchmark S&P 500. Chipmaker Nvidia rose 2.8 per cent.
Payments processor Visa gained 1.5 per cent after giving investors an encouraging financial update.
Energy companies also made broad gains as oil prices ticked more than 1 per cent higher. Occidental Petroleum rose 3.2 per cent.
AMC Entertainment nearly doubled after announcing a program to communicate directly with its large base of individual investors, who have helped send the stock soaring this year. The huge gain came a day after the stock rose 22.7 per cent after announcing a stock sale.
Etsy jumped 7.7 per cent for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after the online crafts marketplace said it will buy Depop, an app that’s popular among young people looking to buy and sell used clothing and vintage fashions from the early 2000s.