By Peter McKay U.S. stocks turned mostly weaker in afternoon trading Friday as a drop in oil prices weighed on the energy and utilities sector and undermined earlier gains in industrial stocks. Technology issues outperformed the broader market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) was recently down about 8 points, or 0.1%, to 9997.12. Oil majors Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) were among the decliners on the index. Sunoco (SUN), which reported a drop in earnings and poor margins on Thursday, was the biggest decliner among energy companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. (SPX). Tesoro (TSO) and Hess (HES) other big energy refiners, were also losers. Earlier, industrials led modest gains in U.S. stocks with General Electric making the biggest gains. GE (GE) was up 6.3% in afternoon trading. Analysts at both Sanford C. Bernstein and Oppenheimer upgraded the conglomerate to an "outperform" rating. Separately, the GE-owned business network CNBC reported that its parent is close to reaching an agreement to sell its 80% stake in NBC Universal to Comcast. Comcast shares were up about 3.5% on the news. The Nadsaq Composite Index (RIXF) was up 0.1%. The S&P 500 (SPX) was very slightly lower at 1066.29, weighed on by the drop in energy shares. Another factor in the market's muted performance was the weak unemployment report. Government data showed the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 10.2% and that the economy lost 190,000 jobs. "There is some push and some pull on the unemployment report," said Craig Peckham, equity trading strategist with Jefferies. "More specifically though, there's a lot of people playing this lower oil, which helps the consumer kind of trade today." While stocks didn't sell-off on the jobs report, other markets showed a push into less risky assets. U.S. gold futures topped $1,100 an ounce Friday for the first time before trading at $1,093 recently. Treasury prices climbed, with the 2-year note up 1/16 to yield 0.852% and the 10-year up 5/32 to yield 3.508%. Pacing the stock market's gains for industrials, General Electric (GE) rose 6.9% after Oppenheimer boosted its rating on the stock to outperform from perform, saying the diversified company's financial portfolio is stabilizing. Starbucks (SBUX) rose 7.5% after the company raised its earnings outlook for next year and reported a $150 million fiscal fourth-quarter profit. Declines in the Dow and in the broader market were led by financials and energy firms, including J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM). For energy firms, a more than $2 a barrel drop in oil prices weighed on the sector. Much like the stock market, oil prices were weighed down by the October jobs report. Still, the decline in oil was a boon for consumer stocks, which continued their broad rally from Thursday. Starbucks was particularly strong after the coffee retailer raised its earnings outlook for next year and reported a $150 million fiscal fourth-quarter profit. On Wall Street, market players grumbled about the unemployment news but didn't see it as cause for all-out panic, with many investors growing accustomed to such bad news after 22 straight months of job losses. Also, the pace of month-to-month losses is now slowing, which bulls take as a sign that a full-blown turnaround in the job market is on the way, perhaps as early as the first quarter of next year. However, it will take any renewed growth spurt a long time to make up for the damage that's already been done, with unemployment rolls up by 8.2 million people since the start of the recession in December 2007. Such sobering long-term measures have made some investors jittery lately about the prospects for consumer spending and corporate profits. "What I don't like about the numbers today is that we're seeing more people out of work for longer," said portfolio manager Kim Caughey, of Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh. "We've seen some employment in the [weekly filings of new jobless] claims numbers, but when we get these payroll reports, we're not seeing the people who were already on the rolls come off." Notably, September's nonfarm payrolls report was revised to a decline of 219,000 jobs from the previously reported 263,000-job decline. Strategist Steve Charest, of Divine Capital Markets in New York, characterized the jobs report as offering neither big disappointments nor sufficient reason for him to abandon his view that the market is due for a correction over the next few months, with major indexes apt to shed perhaps half their gains from the March lows before resuming a trend higher. "In a recession driven by the sort of problems we've seen in the financial sector, you'd expect the unemployment rate to top out around 11%," said Charest. "I try to keep in mind that figure was hit in the early 80's, and aside from high rates breaking the back of inflation, things then were pretty good compared to what we've had recently." In other markets, Treasury prices were mixed, with the 2-year noted up 1.32 to yield 0.860% and the 10-year down 1/16 to yield 3.535%. The dollar fell against both the euro and the yen.
