U.S. Stocks Little Changed After S&P 500 Rises

U.S. stocks were little changed as investors weighed whether a rally in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to an almost four-year high has gone too far amid concerns about global growth.

Energy shares in the S&P 500 had the biggest decline among 10 groups. Big Lots Inc. (BIG) slumped 3.4 percent after sales missed analysts’ estimates. Yelp Inc., the site that lets users review everything from diners to dentists, surged as much as 73 percent in its first day of trading. Sara Lee Corp. rose 4.8 percent after its international coffee company filed for a spinoff.

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The S&P 500 fell less than 0.1 percent to 1,373.71 at 10:29 a.m. time. The benchmark gauge for American equities has advanced 0.6 percent this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 4.81 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 12,975.49.

“There’s a whole too far, too fast thing,” Rick Fier, vice president of equity trading at Conifer Securities LLC in New York, said in a telephone interview. His firm oversees more than $12 billion. “We don’t think that means it’s going to have a huge pullback, but a consolidation would be a relief.”

The euro weakened and German bonds gained as Spain raised its budget-deficit target for 2012 and German retail sales unexpectedly declined. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced a new deficit goal of 5.8 percent of gross domestic product compared with the 4.4 percent target previously agreed with the European Union.