Stock market closes with little changed

NEW YORK - The stock market showed little life Wednesday and closed yet another trading day barely changed from the day before.

Major indexes flitted between tiny gains and losses in the morning, rallied a bit after the Federal Reserve released minutes from its last meeting, then petered out at the end.

The Standard and Poor's 500 ended just 0.09 percent lower. It was the fourth day in a row the index moved less than one-half of one percentage point.

"There's no real reason to rally and no real reason to decline," said Matthew Tuttle, CEO of money manager Tuttle Tactical Management. "It's been really boring."

The S&P 500 closed down 1.98 points, to 2,125.85. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 26.99 points, or 0.2 percent, to 18,285.40. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.71 points, less than 0.1 percent, to 5,071.74.

Stocks fell from the opening as investors weighed the latest batch of earnings reports for the first quarter. Etsy plunged 18 percent after its first earnings report as a publicly traded company showed a hefty quarterly loss. Stock in the e-commerce retailer of crafts dropped $3.80 to $17.20.

With most companies out with their results, earnings per share for S&P 500 stocks are expected to have risen 3 percent from a year ago, according to data provider S&P Capital IQ. That's better than the drop financial analysts predicted in early March, but still low by recent standards.

More worrisome for markets, analysts have been slashing their forecasts for future quarters, too. At the start of 2015, they were expecting a 7 percent jump in S&P 500 earnings for the full year. Now, an increase of less than 1 percent is expected.

Ernie Cecilia, chief investment officer of Bryn Mawr Trust, said investors have feared missing out on a six-year bull market that never seems to falter. "Even in the brief sell-offs, it seems investors and money managers are buying on weakness," he said.

The minutes of the Fed's meeting from April showed that policymakers at the central bank generally thought June was too early to raise interest rates. Stocks have been propelled higher in part by easy money policies at central banks. A rate increase would be the first since the financial crisis.

Among other stocks making moves Wednesday, Staples fell 26 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $16.15 after reporting a sharp drop in first-quarter earnings. Lowe's sank 4.6 percent on earnings and revenue that fell short of what analysts were looking for. Stock of the home-improvement retailer fell $3.33 to $68.50.

Oil rose for the first time in a week after the Energy Department reported a surprisingly large drop in supplies of both crude oil and fuels. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 99 cents to close at $58.98 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oil used by many U.S. refineries, rose $1.01 to close at $65.03 in London.

In other futures trading, wholesale gasoline rose 4.6 cents to close at $2.041 a gallon. Heating oil rose 1.7 cents to close at $1.946 a gallon. Natural gas fell 3.3 cents to close at $2.915 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In metals trading, gold rose $2, to $1,208.70 an ounce. Silver rose 4 cents to $17.11 an ounce. Copper edged down less than a penny, to $2.83 a pound.