Thursday's early afternoon trade: stocks dip as oil retreats, Wal-Mart weighs

Wall Street was lower on Thursday, snapping a three-day rally, after a slump in Wal-Mart weighed on retail stocks and oil prices retreated. Seven of the 10 major S&P sectors were lower, led by a 0.7 percent drop in the financial sector, which led the recent rally. Crude oil prices, whose performance have often dictated stock movements, dropped from session highs after a report showed US crude stocks rose last week.
Wal-Mart slumped 4 percent to $63.46 after the retailer reported a lower quarterly profit and gave a lacklustre sales outlook. The stock was the biggest drag on the Dow. Limiting the losses was IBM, which rose 5.4 percent to $132.91 after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to "overweight" saying the transformation to a cloud-focused business was not priced in.
The three-day rally, led by beaten-down sectors such as financials, materials and energy, boosted the benchmark S&P 500 5.3 percent. But such has been the rout since the start of the year that the index is still down nearly 6 percent in 2016. "I think today, at least up until this point, is somewhat of a day of pause after a quite strong three-day rally due to mostly short covering," said Ryan Larson, head of US equity trading at RBC Global Asset Management in Chicago.
At 12:37 pm ET (1737 GMT), the Dow Jones industrial average was down 8.18 points, or 0.05 percent, at 16,445.65. The S&P 500 was down 2.9 points, or 0.15 percent, at 1,923.92 and the Nasdaq Composite index was down 18.22 points, or 0.4 percent, at 4,515.84. Apple was down 1.1 percent at $97 and was the biggest drag on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.