NEW YORK: US stocks markets were mixed Wednesday after Tuesday's strong gains, with the Nasdaq dragged lower on poor Oracle earnings and other indexes finding little direction in holiday-thinned trade.
"Share volume has been weak," said analysts at Briefing.com "The apathy among traders is most likely due to the fact that many regular participants have taken off for holiday vacations."
Most markets opened the day in the red, after "a lackluster earnings showing from tech titan Oracle" according to Andrea Kramer of Schaeffer's Investment Research.
By the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached 12,107.74 points, up a meager 4.16 points or 0.03 percent.
The S&P 500 was up 0.19 percent, or 2.42 points to 1,243.72.
The Nasdaq meanwhile was down 25.76 points or 0.99 percent to 2,577.97, largely dragged down by Oracle.
Shares of Oracle, one of the Nasdaq's largest companies, lost 11.8 percent after, in a rare event, it missed analyst expectations for quarterly sales and profits and said customers are more cautious and worried about economic growth.
Oracle's fall seemed to impact a broader range of software and hardware firms. IBM shed 3.1 percent, Cisco 2.6 percent, Hewlett-Packard 1.8 percent, and Microsoft 1.0 percent.
But the broader market found a little bit of relief from news that US home re-sales jumped four percent last month, according to the National Association of Realtors.
"Sales reached the highest mark in 10 months and are 34 percent above the cyclical low point in mid-2010 -- a genuine sustained sales recovery appears to be developing," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR.
"It looks like more people are realizing the great opportunity that exists in today's market for buyers with long-term plans."
The uptick was in part overshadowed by the NAR's hefty revisions to estimates of how many homes were sold and how many are on the market since 2007.
"The massive downward revisions -- averaging 14 percent from 2007 -- underscore that economic data can be unreliable," said analysts at RDQ Economics.
However, for most commentators the twin revisions to inventory and sales meant the overall trend remained relevant.
Bond prices were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.97 percent, up from 1.93 percent, while the 30-year bond yield moved up to 3.00 percent from 2.93 percent on Tuesday.
Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.
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