U.S. Shares Slight Gains On ISM Services Index

U.S. shares tallied slight gains Tuesday, with the Dow industrials set to break a four-day losing streak, after a private-industry gauge offered a better-than-expected look at the services sector.

The Institute for Supply Management’s index of nonmanufacturing businesses rose to 53.7% in May from 53.5% in April.

“The optic on it is encouraging,” Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist of Janney Montgomery Scott, said of the report.

“But everything is being trumped at the moment by what is happening in Europe,” he added.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -0.08% climbed 9.12 points, or 0.1%, to 12,110.58, as Market Watch reported.

The S&P 500 Index SPX +0.09% added 3.91 points, or 0.3%, to 1,282.09, with financial companies leading the gains among the index’s 10 industry groups.

The Nasdaq Composite COMP +0.02% rose 10.10 points, or 0.4%, to 2,770.12.

Finance ministers and officials from the Group of Seven industrialized powers conferred by phone on the situation in the euro zone. The G-7 teleconference came ahead of a European Central Bank policy meeting set for Wednesday.

Europe’s debt crisis “appears to be spreading beyond Greece to Spain and possibly Italy,” noted Fred Dickson, chief investment strategist at Davidson Cos.

For every share falling nearly two rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where 194 million shares traded.