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NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks posted modest gains on Tuesday amid cautious trading on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the market's rebound from its lows last year.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 11.86 points (0.11 percent) to end at 10,564.38 after closing on a flat note a day earlier in the absence of market-moving news.
The Nasdaq composite added 8.47 points (0.36 percent) to 2,340.68 while the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index climbed 1.94 points (0.17 percent) to 1,140.44.
Investors were cautious as Wall Street marked the anniversary of the stock market's 12-year low set on March 9, 2009, amid the financial crisis stemming from a home mortgage meltdown.
Since then, the blue-chip Dow index has rallied more than 60 percent.
"We continue to believe the current underlying market rally remains in place, but day-to-day pullbacks are a normal part of a longer-term bull market," said Frederic Dickson, chief market strategist of DA Davidson & Co.
"We expect investors to increase equity exposure on the dips. This behaviour is consistent with the market psychology seen in an extended bull market," he said.
Stock investors on Tuesday were seeking market-moving news in the absence of any key economic data due for release early this week, analysts said.
"Caution seems to be brewing in the markets as investors give pause after stocks advanced in three of the last four weeks," Briefing.com's Patrick O'Hare said.
"With a nearly 70 percent return over the last 12 months in the S&P 500, investors may be starting to feel a bit wary," he said.
Among gainers was aerospace giant Boeing, rising 0.82 percent to 67.79 dollars, after it was poised to win a 35-billion-dollar contract to build an aerial refuelling tanker plane for the US Air Force.
Northrop Grumman, which fell 0.25 percent to 64.00 dollar, and its European partner EADS announced after the market close Monday that they would not bid.
Northrop charged that air force requirements for the tanker programme published last month favoured Boeing and insisted that its larger tanker had greater capabilities at a competitive price.
Energy giant Chevron was almost stable, down 0.46 percent to 74.30 dollars, after announcing it would downsize its global refining and marketing activities to compete in "difficult" market conditions, cutting 2,000 jobs this year.
Rival ExxonMobil advanced 0.45 percent to 66.78 dollars.
Cisco was unchanged at 26.13 dollars after the world's largest maker of computer networking gear unveiled a new generation of superfast Internet routers, saying they would "transform" the Internet with vastly increased speed and capacity.
Citigroup soared 7.30 percent to 3.82 dollars after reports that the government may be ready to sell its 27 percent stake within the next several months.
The bond market was mixed. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond dipped to 3.701 percent from 3.708 percent on Monday and that on the 30-year bond rose to 4.677 percent from 4.672 percent. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions. - AFP/de
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