NEW YORK - Stocks faltered Wednesday, hurt by weakness in the health care sector fueled by unpromising test results for a new Alzheimer's drug and a new call by President Obama to pass federal health care legislation.
The market rallied through most of the session, aided by favorable readings of jobs, service-sector activity, and the Federal Reserve's beige book of regional indicators. But the gains dried up late in the session.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended with a 9.22-point decline at 10,396.76, after rising more than 60 points at its morning high. It's down 0.3 percent year-to-date. The session decline marked the second time in a row that the Dow failed to maintain an intraday rally that could have put it in the black for 2010.
The Nasdaq composite index slipped by a fraction of a point to 2,280.68. The S&P 500 was up 0.48 point to 1,118.79. Both indexes were flat in percentage terms.
Pfizer Inc. was the Dow's weakest component, with its shares off 1.6 percent after Medivation Inc. said its experimental Alzheimer's disease treatment Dimebon, which was in development with Pfizer, failed to show effectiveness in a large late-stage study. The news sent shares of Medivation, which is not a Dow stock, plunging 67.5 percent.
Health insurers clung to gains after Obama's speech, but a number of drug distributors lost ground after Obama proposed elimination of "wasteful" subsidies of pharmaceutical companies.
MARKETWATCH
