Stocks edge down and oil prices slip

A day of quiet trading on Wall Street ended Thursday with major U.S. stock indexes posting slight losses for the second day in a row.

Banks and energy companies led the slide, while high-dividend stocks like utilities, real estate investment trusts and phone companies rose as bond yields fell. The price of U.S. crude oil closed lower.

Small-company stocks fared better than the rest of the market, nudging the Russell 2000 slightly higher.

Trading was light as the New Year’s Day holiday drew near.

“The market is just taking a breather here,” said Jeff Zipper, managing director of investments for the Private Client Reserve of U.S. Bank. “We moved so much in the month of November, there may be some profit-taking, maybe positioning for the first quarter.”

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 13.90 points, or 0.1%, to 19,819.78. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index slipped 0.66 of a point, or 0.03%, to 2,249.26. The Nasdaq composite fell 6.47 points, or 0.1%, to 5,432.09.

The Russell 2000, which tracks small companies, rose 0.2% to 1,363.18.

The major stock market indexes eked out small gains in early trading Thursday. But by mid-morning, they drifted mostly lower and remained in the red the rest of the day.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.47% from Wednesday’s 2.51%.

More stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sears jumped 10% to $9 after the struggling retailer said it had secured a new line of credit.

Newmont Mining was the biggest gainer in the S&P 500 index. It climbed 7.6% to $35.27.

Endologix rose 11.1% to $5.92 after the Irvine drugmaker restarted shipping a device used to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms. Two days earlier, the Food and Drug Administration ordered it to stop shipping the device because of manufacturing problems.

Investors got some favorable economic data from the Labor Department, which reported that fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, continuing a nearly two-year trend that suggests a solid job market. Weekly requests for jobless assistance fell 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 265,000. Over the past year, the number of people collecting benefits has fallen almost 5% to 2.1 million.

Benchmark U.S. crude fell 29 cents to $53.77 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, slipped 8 cents to $56.14 a barrel in London.

Markets overseas were mixed. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 fell 0.2%. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2%, posting its second record-high close in two days. British stocks have benefited from a decline in the value of the pound against other world currencies, which tends to drive up earnings for the multinationals and energy companies that dominate the index.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slid 1.3%, while South Korea’s Kospi inched up 0.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.2%.

Wholesale gasoline rose a penny to $1.68 a gallon, and heating oil held steady at $1.70 a gallon. Natural gas futures fell 10 cents, or 2.5%, to $3.80 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gold rose $17.20, or 1.5%, to $1,158.10 an ounce. Silver added 18 cents to $16.22 an ounce. Copper fell a penny to $2.49 a pound.

In currency trading, the dollar fell to 116.65 yen from Wednesday’s 117.19 yen. The euro fell to $1.0485 from $1.0407.

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UPDATES:

3 p.m.: This article was updated with Endologix’s stock movement.

2 p.m.: This article was updated with closing prices, context and analyst comment.

1:15 p.m.: This article was updated with the close of markets.

7:45 a.m.: This article was updated with market prices and context.

This article was originally published at 6:55 a.m.