Stocks drifted to a mixed finish yesterday after a report of slowing productivity growth intensified worries that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates by as much as a half-percentage point later this month.
Blue-chip stocks led the decline. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 67.01 at 10,413.12 and the Nasdaq composite index was up 13.23 at 3,720.54.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a five-to-four margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,637 up, 1,299 down and 460 unchanged.
NYSE volume totalled 909.89 million shares at the close compared to 986.10 million in the previous session. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 6.34 to 501.90.
Stocks stalled after the Labour Department reported that Americans' productivity, a key measure of future prosperity, rose at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent in the first three months of this year. That marked a sharp slow-down from the previous quarter, when productivity rose at an extremely sharp 6.9 per cent.
