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Wall Street enters the doldrums ahead of US holiday

"The best you can say is the market has held the gains of the week."

Joseph Battipaglia, chief investment officer at Ryan Beck & Co

A strong consumer spending and earnings report wasn't enough to fend off the pre-holiday doldrums on Wall Street Friday as stocks finished an uninspired session mixed. However, the major indexes managed a week of solid gains for the first time in over a month.

Profit-taking following the previous session's rally kept prices lower as investors took a rare chance to lock in gains. Volume was low in advance of the Memorial Day holiday as well. In addition, some investors were looking forward to next Friday's key employment figures to further bolster their bullishness.

"We've made some good progress in the past few days, but the market's tired," said Russ Koesterich, US equity strategist at State Street Corp in Boston. "The market was oversold coming into mid-May. Investors have been nibbling, but we haven't seen the kind of volume that would suggest that the institutions are really coming in."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 16.75, or 0.2 percent, to 10,188.45. The index posted a gain of 95.31 on Thursday.

Broader stock indicators were mixed. The Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped 0.60, or nearly flat, to 1,120.68, and the NASDAQ composite index was up 2.24, or 0.1 percent, at 1,986.74.

For the week, the Dow gained 221.71, or 2.2 percent, the S&P rose 27.12, or 2.5 percent, and the NASDAQ was up 74.65, or 3.9 percent. It was the first positive week for the Dow and S&P after four straight weeks of losses, while the NASDAQ posted its second straight week of gains.

The past week also helped the markets turn finish the month on a positive note, leading some analysts to believe that the markets have finally reached their short-term lows and will move higher in June. For the month, the S&P rose 1.2 percent and the NASDAQ was up 3.5 percent, while the Dow was down just 0.4 percent.

For the year so far, the S&P was 0.8 percent higher, while the Dow was down 2.5 percent and the NASDAQ was off 0.8 percent.

The US Department of Commerce reported that consumer spending rose 0.3 percent in April, another solid gain after an 0.5 percent hike in March.

Even more encouraging, personal income rose by 0.6 percent in April, following a 0.4 percent increase in March -- a sign that consumers will have more to spend in the future and can absorb some of the inflationary effects in the market, such as high oil prices.

Joseph Battipaglia, chief investment officer at Ryan Beck & Co, attributed the sluggish performance to investors unwilling to make major new commitments ahead of the three-day weekend and with a threat of a terrorist attack looming.

``The best you can say is the market has held the gains of the week,'' Battipaglia said. ``One has to come back to the notion that a very strong quarter profit-wise and very decent economic news suggests that there's an underpinning in the market to hold at these levels.''

Shares of semicondutor makers rose across the board after Novellus Systems Inc., a maker of chip manufacturing equipment raised its earnings and revenue targets for the second quarter. In a mid-quarter conference call, executives were bullish about their business prospects and said conditions were improving steadily. Novellus was up US$1.91 at US$33.29, Intel Corp rose US$0.10 to US$28.55, and National Semiconductor Corp gained US$0.71 to US$21.67.

Frontier Airlines Inc, reporting quarterly earnings before the session, had a harder time absorbing fuel costs. The airline posted a wider-than-expected loss due to rising fuel prices and intense competition among low-fare carriers. Frontier fell US$0.06 to US$9.30.

Coeur d'Alene Mines was down US$0.37 at US$4.69 after announcing an effort to buy Wheaton River Minerals Ltd in a US$1.8 billion cash-and-stock deal. Wheaton River lost a penny to US$2.91.

Riggs National Corp jumped US$3.10 to US$21.84 after The Washington Post reported that the commercial banking company had hired an investment bank to seek out potential buyers.

El Paso Corp. fell US$0.52 to US$7.21 after the Houston-based energy company said its financial reports for the fourth quarter 2004 and first quarter have not yet been audited. The company announced that it would revise the results earlier this month after employees overstated oil and gas production levels.
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