Stock prices mainly flat as earnings fail to inspire
BY Wire reports
Thursday, February 07, 2013
2/07/13 at 3:59 AM
Stocks were flat Wednesday as the latest round of earnings reports failed to give investors an impetus to push the market's recent rally forward.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 7.22 points to 13,986.52. The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 0.83 point to 1,512.12.
Time Warner rose $2.05, or 4.1 percent, to $52.01 after the company said its net income grew 51 percent in the last three months of 2012 even as revenue was largely unchanged.
Stocks are consolidating their gains after surging since the start of the year. The Dow closed above 14,000 for the first time since December 2007 on Friday and had its best January in almost two decades. The index is up 6.7 percent this year; the broader S&P 500 is 6 percent higher.
"There's no question that we need to take a pause and let reality catch up," said Jim Russell, an investment director at U.S. Bank.
