NEW YORK — A late rise in technology shares helped the U.S. stock market stagger to a tiny gain after a choppy day of trading Tuesday.
A combination of tepid earnings results, falling oil prices and downbeat news kept the market lower for most of the day. Major indexes started higher in the first few minutes of trading but quickly faded, as slipping confidence among homebuilders and another drop in crude pulled housing and energy stocks down.
The S&P 500 spent the afternoon slowly recovering, until a late surge in Apple, Netflix and other technology titans helped nudge the index up.
“There’s just a lot driving trading today,” Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives with the Schwab Center for Financial Research. “I think we’re going to see more volatility for a while, not just down but up, too.”
The S&P 500 index inched up 3.13 points, or 0.2 percent, to finish at 2,022.55.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 3.66 points, a sliver of a percent, to 17,515.23, and the Nasdaq rose 20.46 points, or 0.4 percent, to 4,654.85.
Of the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 index, technology companies had the best day, with Apple and Netflix climbing 3 percent.
Frederick said uncertainty is behind the recent turbulence. At the moment, there are just too many open questions about oil prices and the global economy.
He pointed to two upcoming events that could swing markets: a meeting of the European Central Bank on Thursday and elections in Greece on Sunday. Many in the markets are betting that the ECB will unveil a new effort to revive that region’s flagging economy.
The International Monetary Fund cut its forecasts for global growth over the next two years, warning that persistent weakness in most major economies will outweigh any benefit from lower oil prices. It now predicts global growth at 3.5 percent this year and 3.7 percent in 2016.
