NEW YORK, Aug 14, (V7N) - Wall Street stocks were little changed early Friday as markets digested a weak US retail sales report in a late-summer vacation period of light trading volumes.
Total retail sales were down 0.6 percent in July from the previous month, at $763.6 billion, missing analyst expectations by a wide margin.
Analysts noted caveats such as a drop in gasoline prices from June and the shifting of Amazon's "Prime" day of discounts to June, leading some consumers to front-load purchases.
About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.1 percent at 53,808.29.
The broad-based S&P 500 edged up 0.1 percent to 7,806.21, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index also added 0.1 percent at 26,831.07.
"It's a summer Friday, a lot of people are on vacation or looking forward to vacation," said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers.
Retail sales "should have caused a bit of reaction and they really didn't, which is just telling you that a lot of people are not in the mood to take big positions or really change their portfolios," Sosnick said.
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