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Wall Street stocks off ahead of jobs data

NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks lost ground on Thursday amid caution ahead of the March employment data due out Friday, when the market will be closed for the Good Friday holiday, analysts said.

They also cited some profit-taking after Wednesday's rally, which took the Dow Industrials to their 19th record closing high this year.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 5.06 points at 5,684.68 at 1 p.m. EST. Declines led advances by 10 to nine on light volume of about 196 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Investors are difintely not in a rush to act," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at First Albany Corp.

"By and large, you are seeing cautious trading, which reflects the recognition that very important news is coming out over the next three weeks, starting with tomorrow's employment report, and no one wants to take a stake until those numbers are in," Johnson said.

Wall Street analysts expect non-farm payrolls to increase by about 60,000 following February's stunning rise of 705,000, which sent the Dow plunging 171 points.

The unemployment rate was expected to come in at 5.6 percent, up a notch from the prior month's 5.5 percent.

The standouts Thursday were energy stocks, which reflected faith in a improving economy.

"A lot of portfolio managers have resisted buying these stocks because they have been whipsawed so many times," Johnson said.

"Now, the performance of these stocks is so good that these very same portfolio managers are jumping on board because they realise the rise in energy prices is not just a temporary phenomenon due to weather and the absence of Iraqi oil," he said.

"They are up because of improving demand due to an improving eceonomy."

Texaco was up 1-1/4 at 87-1/4, Mobil rose 2-1/2 to 120, Chevron was up 1/4 at 57-5/8 and Exxon rose 1-1/2 to 85-3/8.

Analysts said there was no fallout on the markets following the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 32 other people in a plane crash near the Croatian resort town of Dubrovnik on Wednesday.

The New York Stock Exchange stopped trading and observed a minute of silence at noon in memory of those who perished, including several leading business executives.

The most actively traded issue on the NYSE was Lucent Technologies, which was up 4 at 31 on volume of about 31 million shares on its first day of trading in the biggest initial public offering in U.S. history.

Shares of Lucent, which was spun off by AT&T Corp. as part of its three-way split up, opened at 31-7/8. The offering price was $27 per share.

Among Thursday's special situations, shares in Hyperion Software Corp. lost almost half their market value after an earnings warning from the company and a brokerage house downgrade.

Brokerage Alex Brown, which had previously strongly recommended buying Hyperion's stock, downgraded it to buy. The stock was down 7-1/2 at 11 in active trading.

The Nasdaq index was up 2.98 points at 1,118.83, and the American Stock Exchange index was 3.10 points higher at 577.42. The Standard & Poor's composite index of 500 stocks was up 0.54 point at 656.42.-Reuter