Mixed finish for Wall Street after milestone week

Wall Street capped a milestone-setting week yesterday with a mixed finish for the major U.S. stock indexes and the second all-time high in two days for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

An afternoon sell-off erased modest gains for the S&P 500 that had the benchmark index on track to eke out its own record high for much of the day.

Losses for technology companies and retailers, two of the market’s hottest sectors this year, offset gains in energy and industrial stocks.

“When you have a big up week like we’ve had, we’re at all-time highs, for people to take a little bit of risk off the table going into the weekend isn’t a big surprise,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.

The S&P 500 index dropped 1.08 points, or 0.04 percent, to 2,929.67, just under its latest all-time high set a day earlier. The Dow gained 86.52 points, or 0.3 percent, to 26,743.50, thanks largely to gains in Boeing and McDonald’s.

The Nasdaq composite lost 41.28 points, or 0.5 percent, to 7,986.96. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies gave up 7.87 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,712.32.

The Dow and S&P 500 each ended the week with their 10th weekly gain in the past 12 weeks.

Coming off Thursday’s record-setting rally, trading was listless for much of yesterday. A couple of factors may have contributed to the market’s late-afternoon pullback.

Yesterday was “quadruple witching” day, when options and futures contracts expire, which often results in heavy trading.

Also, next Monday the S&P 500 is changing the lineup of the 11 company sectors that make up the benchmark index. Technology giants Google and Facebook will join Netflix and 15 other companies in a new communications services sector.

The change forces exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, and other funds that track the S&P 500’s sectors to make trades to reflect the new alignment of the index.

“There’s probably some selling going on in ETFs and mutual funds right now and also probably on Monday,” Frederick said.

AP PHOTO FLYING HIGH: Wall Street closed a record-setting week with a mixed finish yesterday, but the Dow and S&P 500 each ended with their 10th weekly gain in the last 12 weeks.