Another choppy day on Wall Street 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% gain after having been down 0.7% in the early going. The Nasdaq composite also recovered to eke out a 0.1% gain, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2%.

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 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.25%.

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, Mr. 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.

The S&P 500 added 5.53 points to 4,405.80. The Dow fell 66.57 points to 34,894.12. The tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 15.87 points to 14,541.79. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 26.36 points, or 1.2%, to 2,132.42.

The broader market has been losing ground overall since the benchmark S&P 500 reached another record high on Monday. It’s