Choppy trading ends with indexes mixed

Wall Street closed out another choppy day of trading Thursday, leaving the major stock indexes on pace for a weekly loss.

The S&P 500 managed a 0.1 percent gain after having been down 0.7 percent in the early going. The Nasdaq composite also recovered to eke out 0.1 percent gain, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2 percent.

Small-companies fell broadly. A late-afternoon rally in technology stocks helped offset some of the losses in energy companies, banks and other sectors. Prices for oil and other commodities also fell, pulling mining and energy stocks lower. The yield on the 10year Treasury note fell to 1.25 percent.

Investors continued to size up quarterly report cards from retailers. Macy’s posted its second-biggest single-day gain as traders cheered the department store chain’s latest results.

Much of the market’s choppiness, especially in the S&P 500, is due to investors trying to position themselves as they gauge the pace of the recovery and how it will benefit different sectors of the economy.

“One of the challenges right now is we’re getting some degree of a mixed message about what is working and what’s not,” said Eric Freedman, chief investment officer at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

The market first has to gauge the near-term prospects for the economy as COVID-19 remains a threat, Freedman said. At the same time, investors have to also focus on what the economy looks like after the virus recedes or when the world learns to live with the virus in a different way.

“There’s going to be a lot of fits and starts,” he said.

Commodities fell broadly, with everything from oil to agricultural commodities to metals moving lower. Copper prices fell 1.9 percent, while the price of U.S. crude oil closed 2.7 percent lower. The drop in commodities prices dragged down oil companies and those who extract raw materials for industrial uses. Miner Freeport-McMoRan, Devon Energy and Occidental Petroleum fell 3 percent or more.

The volatility in the commodities markets is notable because investors have been acutely focused on inflation as the global economy emerges from the pandemic. Earlier this year prices for basic materials like lumber and copper and gasoline were all rising steadily and several high multi-year highs. Most of those gains have now been erased with declines in recent weeks.

Robinhood sank 10.3 percent as traders worried that the booming growth at the popular online brokerage app could slow down.