U.S. Stocks Open Lower On Earnings Caution

U.S. stocks began Tuesday mildly lower as investors braced for quarterly earnings and after the International Monetary Fund offered another outlook of slower global growth.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average  declined 7.68 points, or 0.1%, to 13,575.97.

Dow component and aluminum producer Alcoa Inc.  is slated to release its third-quarter results after the market close. Read: What Alcoa’s earnings mean for the stock market.

The S&P 500 index  fell nearly 1 point to 1,454.97, with health care falling the most and energy the best performer among its 10 major industries.

The Nasdaq Composite  shed 9.95 points, or 0.3%, to 3,102.40.

Tuesday marked the five-year anniversary of the S&P 500 hitting its all-time peak of 1,565.15, with the index on Monday closing a little less than 7% below that level.

Advancers and decliners ran nearly even on the New York Stock Exchange, where 50 million shares traded as of 9:45 a.m. Eastern.

“Even though the stock market has rallied, stock-market-exchange volume declined 4% in the past week, has fallen 30% from a year ago, and plunged 44% from two years ago,” Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial, wrote in emailed research.

Marketwatch