By Rodrigo Campos
Stocks in the healthcare sector led the market's afternoon rebound, with biotech shares up a day after Amgen's
The health insurance sector also rose after Coventry Health Care's
The U.S. consumer confidence index declined more than expected in July, a second consecutive monthly fall, as a sluggish labor market continued to worry consumers, the Conference Board said.
Strong earnings have given a second wind to a stock market rally that wilted in June after a 40 percent gain in the S&P 500 from its 12-year closing low in March.
"We've seen an 11 percent rally in 2 weeks," said Tim Smalls, head of U.S. stock trading at Execution LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut.
He said that with the markets technically overbought, and looking for a reason to take a breather, the stock market's slight decline is a good performance.
Smalls added that a lot of the afternoon recovery was linked to a poor U.S. Treasury auction, as money shifted from bonds into the stock market.
Shorter-dated U.S. Treasury debt fell after weak results in an auction of a record $42 billion of two-year notes had some analysts wondering if the global appetite for U.S. government debt might be waning.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> shed 11.79 points, or 0.13 percent, to 9,096.72. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> dropped 2.56 points, or 0.26 percent, to 979.62.
But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> gained 7.62 points, or 0.39 percent, to 1,975.51.
Amgen's stock rose 2.7 percent to $62.42 on Nasdaq following the company's release of much better-than-expected second-quarter earnings after Monday's closing bell. The Dow Jones biotechnology index <.DJUSBT> gained 1.8 percent.
Coventry Health Care
Aetna
But the energy sector's shares weighed on the broader market as the weak consumer confidence data took a toll on oil prices, which had risen on optimism about the economic recovery. U.S. front-month crude futures dropped $1.15, or 1.7 percent, to settle at $67.23 a barrel. The S&P energy index <.GSPE> slid 1.5 percent.
Exxon Mobil Corp
Office Depot
U.S. Steel Corp
Earlier on Tuesday, Standard & Poor's/Case-Schiller released data that showed U.S. single-family home prices rose in May from April, the first monthly increase in three years.
(Editing by Jan Paschal)