Wall St. little changed but tech weighs on Nasdaq

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were mixed on Monday with the tech sector weighing on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 as investors make space for Alibaba's planned debut later this week.

Alibaba Group plans to increase the size of its U.S. initial public offering because of "overwhelming" investor demand, people familiar with the deal said, giving a short-lived push to shares of Yahoo , who owns a 23 percent stake.

"Tech has done well lately so there?s a little profit taking there and maybe (investors) are making some room for Alibaba," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

The tech sector of the S&P 500 <.SPLRCT> closed at a multi-year record last Thursday.

Forrest also said the market is broadly in a holding pattern ahead of Wednesday's statement after the Federal Reserve's policy-setting committee meets, with investors in search of hints as to when the first U.S. rate hike in more than eight years will happen.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was rising 15.53 points, or 0.09 percent, to 17,003.04, the S&P 500 <.SPX> was losing 2.57 points, or 0.13 percent, to 1,982.97 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> was dropping 41.71 points, or 0.91 percent, to 4,525.89.

The largest percentage gainer on the New York Stock Exchange was Alere Inc , rising 12.63 percent, while the largest percentage decliner was Bankrate Inc , down 16.35 percent.

Among the most active stocks on the NYSE were Bank of America , up 0.27 percent to $16.84; Nokia Corp , up 2.63 percent to $8.59 and Sprint Corp , down 0.86 percent to $6.94.

On the Nasdaq, Yahoo , up 0.1 percent to $42.94 after earlier rising nearly 3 percent; Avanir Pharma , up 64.4 percent to $11.08; and Apple Inc , up 0.9 percent to $102.60, were among the most actively traded.

Declining issues were outnumbering advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,826 to 1,065, for a 1.71-to-1 ratio on the downside; on the Nasdaq, 2,011 issues were falling and 595 advancing for a 3.38-to-1 ratio favoring decliners.

The broad S&P 500 index was posting 11 new 52-week highs and 5 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite was recording 25 new highs and 56 new lows.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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