Indexes mostly flat; buyers pick up techs, industrials

By Abhiram Nandakumar

(Reuters) - U.S. stock indexes were little changed in muted afternoon trading on Wednesday as investors bought into tech and industrial stocks after selling retailers earlier in the session after a disappointing full-year forecast from Macy's.

U.S. bond markets were closed for Veteran's Day, which also made for generally directionless trading.

Amazon was up 2.2 percent at $674.10, providing the biggest boost to the S&P and Nasdaq, while rises of more than 1 percent by General Electric , 3M and Honeywell boosted the industrial sector.

Energy stocks were weighed down by a more-than 3 percent drop in oil prices. The S&P energy sector <.SPNY> was down 1.75 percent, the steepest decline among the 10 major S&P sectors.

 

Exxon and Chevron each dropped about 1 percent as oil prices fell too their lowest since mid-September on worries about growing U.S. stockpiles. [O/R]

Retailers fell after Macy's reported a 3.6 percent drop in quarterly same-store sales and slashed its full-year sales and profit forecasts. Analysts had expected a rise in same-store sales.

Macy's shares fell as much as 14.7 percent to $40.10, while JC Penney dropped as much as 5 percent to $8.24 despite a 6.4 percent rise in same-store sales.

Nordstrom , Dillard's and Kohl's dropped between 5 and 7 percent.

Alibaba's shares - which up to Tuesday had risen more than 40 percent since Sept. 29 - were down 2 percent at $79.73 even though the e-commerce giant said sales in its annual Singles' Day online shopping event on Wednesday hit a record $14.32 billion. Sales last year totalled $9.3 billion.

"Now that the pressure from Macy's has worn off, the buyers are coming back," said Phil Davis, chief executive of PSW Investments in Paterson, New Jersey.

At 13:30 p.m. ET the Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was down 20.91 points, or 0.12 percent, at 17,737.3, the S&P 500 <.SPX> was down 2.55 points, or 0.12 percent, at 2,079.17 and the Nasdaq composite index <.IXIC> was up 2.51 points, or 0.05 percent, at 5,085.76.

Apache Corp fell 7.7 percent to $49.21 after Anadarko Petroleum confirmed its offer to buy the company had been rejected. Anadarko was down 4.3 percent at $60.69.

Horizon Pharma slumped 19.2 percent to $18.08 after prescription drug plan manager Express Scripts removed a pharmacy connected to Horizon from its network.

Boston Scientific fell 4.3 percent to $17.99 after the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed limited reimbursement coverage for a type of heart device, including the company's recently approved Watchman device.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,687 to 1,292. On the Nasdaq, 1,598 issues fell and 1,109 advanced. The S&P 500 index showed 15 new 52-week highs and 11 new lows, while the Nasdaq posted 92 new highs and 99 new lows.

(Reporting by Abhiram Nandakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)