Wall St flat as Disney weighs; holiday sales in focus | Reuters

Wall Street was little changed on Friday, a shortened trading day, as investors turn their focus to the crucial U.S. holiday shopping season and Disney weighed on indexes.

Trading was relatively light as the market is scheduled to close at 1 p.m. ET (1700 GMT). U.S. markets were shut on Thursday for Thanksgiving.

Dow component Walt Disney fell 3.6 percent to $114.46, after the media giant said late on Wednesday that its ESPN sports network lost 3 million subscribers in 2015.

Disney was the biggest drag on the Dow and the S&P 500 and dragged down other media stocks.

Viacom fell 4 percent and weighed the most on the Nasdaq. Time Warner Inc, Twenty-First Century Fox and CBS Corp were also trading down.

At 10:36 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 26.76 points, or 0.15 percent, at 17,786.63, the S&P 500 was up 0.01 points, or 0 percent, at 2,088.88 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 5.92 points, or 0.12 percent, at 5,122.06.

Seven of the 10 major S&P sectors were higher with the telecommunications index leading the advancers with a 0.56 percent gain.

Crowds were thin at U.S. stores and shopping malls in the early hours of Black Friday and on Thanksgiving evening as shoppers responded to early holiday discounts with caution and bad weather hurt turnout.

The shopping season spanning November and December is crucial for many retailers because the two months can account for anywhere between 20 percent and 40 percent of annual sales.

The National Retail Federation is expecting holiday sales to rise 3.7 percent, slower than last year’s 4.1 percent increase.

Amazon was little changed at $675.68, while Target rose 0.3 percent to $73.41. Other retailers such as Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney and Best Buy were all slightly down.

The broader Dow Jones U.S. Retailers Index was flat.

“We believe Thanksgiving shopping was a bust,” analysts at Suntrust Robinson Humphrey said in a research note. “Members of our team who went to the malls first had no problem finding parking or navigating stores.”

Crude oil futures were lower on Friday, bringing losses this month to over 8 percent as disappointing Chinese data and worries over a supply glut overshadowed geopolitical concerns. The S&P energy index fell 0.78 percent and was the biggest decliner.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,580 to 1,214. On the Nasdaq, 1,498 issues rose and 960 fell.

The S&P 500 index showed 10 new 52-week highs and one new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 42 new highs and 19 new lows.

(Reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.