Eight Is Enough for Dow

Updated from 4:04 p.m. EST

Stocks closed mixed after a late recovery, but the Dow's eight-week winning streak was halted amid profit-taking at the end of a huge earnings week.

The Dow lost 54.89 points, or 0.5%, to 10,568.29; the S&P 500 slipped 2.39 points, or 0.2%, to 1141.55, but managed to extend its winning streak to nine weeks; while the Nasdaq gained 4.86 points, or 0.2%, to 2123.87, which wasn't enough to secure a seventh consecutive up week.

The Dow finished the week down 0.3%, the S&P 500 rose 0.2% and the Nasdaq slipped 0.8%.

Volume on the New York Stock Exchange was 1.54 billion shares, while 2.24 billion shares changed hands on the Nasdaq. Advancers beat decliners by about 5 to 4 on the Nasdaq, and were close to even on the NYSE.

"There has been some profit-taking on earnings announcements and the late-day selloff in bonds is going to bother anything financial or interest rate sensitive," said Sean Martin, head trader at A. Gary Shilling. "We've had some good gains, so people are taking some money off the table."

"With no big economic news due for release today, traders and investors are left to read earnings press releases and ruminate about just how long the Fed will keep interest rates low," said Ken Tower, chief market strategist at CyberTrader.

Other Markets

Bonds came under pressure after the Treasury said it was considering issuing a 20-year inflation indexed security; the 10-year Treasury note fell 31/32, yielding 4.07%, erasing early gains.

The dollar was stronger against the euro, on concerns the rapidly appreciating European currency would hurt that region's economy. The dollar was also stronger against the Japanese yen. The euro was worth about $1.2588 while the dollar was fetching 106.66 yen.

Markets overseas finished mostly higher, with Germany's Xetra DAX up 0.3% at 4152 and London's FTSE 100 down 0.4% at 4461. In Asia, Japan's Nikkei added 0.6% at 11,069 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was closed for the Chinese New Year.

Sector Scorecard

In general, companies have had little trouble beating analyst expectations, but with fourth-quarter earnings season almost halfway done, there have been few surprises on a sector basis. Economically-sensitive sectors have had the best quarters thus far, while more stable areas posted less impressive results.

Big winners include telecommunications, information technology and financials. Telecommunication stocks have outperformed the pack by a landslide; earnings have risen by over 1,200% from the same quarter last year, a tremendous turnaround considering last year's 4.5% decline in the fourth quarter, according to Bloomberg. Coming in a distant second, IT profits have improved about 62%, a dramatic recovery from last year's 7.8% increase. Finally, financials improved 33.8% from 5.5%.

Laggards include consumer staples, energy and utilities. Earnings in the consumer staple sector grew by only 9%, energy rose by 19.3% and utilities increased by 20%.

Although he wasn't surprised by the results, Daniel Morgan, fund manager at Noble Financial Group, expressed relief that earnings have met expectations. "We got what the Street was banking on, but I am very pleased because it has been three years of pain."