Wall Street dips at open; S&P on track for lower week

The S&P is on track for a fourth session that closes below its 14-day moving average, a sign of weak near-term momentum

US stocks were slightly lower on Friday as the latest economic data gave investors few reasons to buy with indexes still hovering near record levels.

The day's losses continued a recent trend of being shallow but broad, with nine of the ten primary S&P 500 sectors down on the day. Financials, up 0.1 percent, were the only positive group.

Retail sales rose 0.6 percent in August, as expected, while the July report was revised to show growth of 0.3 percent rather than flat growth.

The report did little to give the equity market direction, which has been lacking all week. Markets have posted small moves on slight volume, though the trend has been modestly negative and the Dow and S&P were on track to snap a five-week streak of gains.

"So far the market is quiet and just drifting around," said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group in New York. "There aren't a lot of alternatives (to stocks), but there are also some concerns about valuation, which aren't cheap but also aren't super expensive."

The S&P is on track for a fourth session that closes below its 14-day moving average, a sign of weak near-term momentum. The level served as resistance Thursday, suggesting it may be difficult to resume the market's former trend of grinding higher gradually.

For the week the Dow is down 0.8 percent, the S&P is down 0.8 percent and the Nasdaq is down less than 0.1 percent. All three were on track to end a five-week run of advances.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 45.41 points, or 0.27 percent, to 17,003.59, the S&P 500 lost 5.95 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,991.5 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 13.32 points, or 0.29 percent, to 4,578.49.

The largest percentage gainer on the New York Stock Exchange was China Green Agriculture Inc, which soared 66.67 percent, while the largest percentage decliner was Lentuo International, down 7.48 percent.

Among the most active stocks on the NYSE were Sprint Corp, up 5.78 percent to $6.95; Bank of America, up 0.48 percent to $16.65, and Petroleo Brasil, down 4.08 percent to $16.91.

On the Nasdaq, among the most active were Apple Inc, down 0.2 percent to $101.19; Yahoo Inc, up 1.2 percent to $41.77 and Microsoft Corp, down 0.6 percent to $46.74.

Declining issues were outnumbering advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,979 to 729, for a 2.71-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,335 issues were falling and 879 advancing for a 1.52-to-1 ratio.

The broad S&P 500 index was posting 5 new 52-week highs and 1 new low; the Nasdaq Composite was recording 28 new highs and 9 new lows.