Mixed End to Rocky Day for Stocks

Updated from 4:13 p.m. EDT

The stock market had a choppy session Wednesday, and at the end of trading blue chips closed little changed while tech stocks finished modestly positive.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.32 points at 10,216.59, and the S&P 500 fell 0.84 points to 1176.84. The Nasdaq Composite rose 9.75 points, or 0.48%, to 2047.22.

"We had a nice turnaround in the Nasdaq today," said Peter Cardillo, chief market analyst with S.W. Bach & Co. "Bottom line, I think we may be very close to a turnaround as soon as the market discounts a barrage of bad news, such as higher energy prices, higher inflation and murky fourth-quarter earnings results."

The Dow was pressured by losses of 1.4% or more in Altria(MO Quote), Boeing(BA Quote) and Caterpillar(CAT Quote).

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson(JNJ Quote) was the Dow's best performer, up 3.8%.

About 1.81 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, with two stocks falling for every one that rose. On the Nasdaq, trading volume was 1.81 billion shares, and decliners and advancers were even.

"We're still working toward an oversold position," said Robert Pavlik, chief investment officer with Oaktree Asset Management. "The sentiment is very negative, shown in the advancers vs. decliners over the last couple days. So far we've had a mixed bag of earnings, which hasn't helped either."

The Dow started trading Thursday down 352 points, or 3.3%, thus far in October, while the S&P 500 was off 51 points, or 4.2%, and the Nasdaq had lost 115 points, or 5.4%.

In other markets, the 10-year Treasury was down 5/32 in price to yield 4.47%, while the dollar rose against the yen and euro. At the Nymex, the November crude contract fell $1.04 to close at $63.08 a barrel, while gasoline futures were lower by 7 cents at $1.76 a gallon.