NEW YORK — Stocks finished a quiet session moderately lower Monday as investors grappled with concerns about the health of corporate profits after Wachovia Corp. posted disappointing quarterly results.
Investors paused after a sell-off Friday and ahead of a raft of quarterly results and economic data arriving this week.
Wachovia surprised investors by posting a first-quarter loss of $393 million and cutting its quarterly dividend by 41 percent to 37.5 cents. The bank, which analysts had expected to post a profit, also said it plans to raise $7 billion through a stock offering.
But investors appeared to find some encouragement in the session from a better-than-expected report on retail sales. The Commerce Department’s reading on March retail sales, which showed a modest 0.2 percent rise after February’s 0.6 percent decline, appeared to quell some unease about the economy.
The March figure bested the flat reading analysts had predicted. Excluding a 1.1 percent increase at gasoline service stations, retail sales would have been flat last month — and possibly negative when adjusted for inflation.
“We obviously came out with more bad financial news,” said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research, referring to the Wachovia report. “The flip side is we had retail sales come in a little better than expected. It seems like they kind of negated each other.”
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 23.36, or 0.19 percent, to 12,302.06.
Broader stock indicators also declined. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 4.51, or 0.34 percent, to 1,328.32, and the technology-laden Nasdaq composite index fell 14.42, or 0.63 percent, to 2,275.82.
Declining issues outpaced advancers by a ratio of about 3-to-2 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 1.18 billion shares compared with 1.26 billion shares traded Friday.Gold prices turned higher, and the dollar was mixed against other major currencies.
