Blue-Chips Fall, but Yahoo! Lifts Nasdaq

Updated from 2:36 p.m. EDT

Stocks in New York went out narrowly mixed Tuesday as investors digested a cautious outlook at Wal-Mart (WMT Quote), the return of surging oil futures, and sobering words on the liquidity crisis from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, under pressure from both Wal-Mart and the day's worst-performing component, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote), fell 45 points, or 0.4%, to 12,831. The S&P 500 was down fractionally, losing a half-point to 1403.

The tech-laden Nasdaq Composite, however, eked out a 7-point gain, or 0.3%, at 2495, following encouraging news at Yahoo! (YHOO Quote).

"We're in no-man's land," said Fred Dickson, senior vice president and market strategist with D.A. Davidson. "Little incremental news items have what appear to be fairly significant intraday market impact, but when you look at it over four or five days, they cancel each other out."

Dickson added that that there isn't enough good news to push investors on the buy side much higher, and further drags remain in stubbornly high oil prices and the weak U.S. dollar.

"Overall, investor confidence seems very, very low," he said. "The real good news is that we haven't seen big drops on light volume, and typically that's what we'll see in a really crummy market." He noted that that excludes "occasional" drops like the one that occurred Friday, which was, at any rate, followed by a Monday bounce-back.

Charles Rotblut, senior market analyst with Zacks Investment Research, said, "It seems like people are on hold to see whether we'll actually see the second-half recovery occur. We're entering a period without a lot of catalysts: earnings season is over, and the Fed is on hold at least until August. People are focusing on oil and gas to see how expensive it'll be for people to fill their tank this summer."