Wall Street near flat; Internet names gain

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were nearly flat on Thursday as gains in Internet shares were offset by a decline in Exxon Mobil .

Exxon reported first-quarter earnings that exceeded expectations, but its shares dipped 1 percent to $101.43 and led the way down for the S&P 500.

Shares of Cardinal Health and Textron , which reported some disappointing quarterly results, also limited gains.

Facebook , up 2.2 percent at $61.06, and other Internet shares were among the day's better performers, helped by strong results from Yelp , whose shares gained 9.5 percent to $63.85.

Netflix Inc rose 4.4 percent to $336.28 while TripAdvisor Inc added 3.5 percent to $83.58.

The shares had slumped recently on concerns that they, along with biotech "momentum" names, were overvalued. The Nasdaq ended April with a 2 percent loss for the month, while both the Dow and S&P 500 had slight gains.

"The kind of rotations we've seen to me are very often the prelude to a general selloff," said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners in New York.

"Tech has badly underperformed the S&P and Dow. The risk trade is coming off," he said. "To me the risk trade coming off means eventually the market trade is coming off."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> fell 54.87 points or 0.33 percent, to 16,525.97, the S&P 500 <.SPX> lost 3.76 points or 0.2 percent, to 1,880.19 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 1.743 points or 0.04 percent, to 4,116.299.

On the downside, Cardinal fell 5.4 percent to $65.78 as its revenue missed expectations, while Textron lost 4.2 percent to $39.16 following its results.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski)

WhatsAppFacebookTwitterLinkedinBeloudBluesky