Stocks shrug off new Greece turmoil

NEW YORK - U.S stocks were mixed in light trading on Monday as investors largely shrugged off falling energy prices, a plunging Russian ruble and fears that Greece could renege on its bailout.

Stocks wavered throughout the day, with the Dow Jones industrial average moving between gains and losses several times. In the end the blue-chip index closed down slightly, but other major indexes recorded tiny gains.

"Most of the bad news came from overseas ... and that makes the U.S. market more attractive," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank. "Investors are shifting money from overseas."

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 2 points to close at 2,091. The Dow fell 15.48 points, or 0.1 percent, to 18,038.23. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.05 points to 4,806.91

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 3 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,093 as of 3:05 p.m. Eastern time. The Dow added 4 points to 18,058, while the Nasdaq composite was flat at 4,807.

News that Greece will hold early general elections next month stoked concerns over the country's finances. An opposition party that is against the terms of the country's bailout program is leading in the polls, and investors worry it will seek changes if it wins.

Despite troubles abroad, the U.S. economy has provided support for U.S. stocks as 2014 comes to a close. Employers are on track to hire nearly 3 million workers this year, the most since the dot-com boom year of 1999. The unemployment rate has dropped to 5.8 percent, down about a percentage point since the start of the year. And the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 5 percent in the July-September quarter, the fastest in 11 years.

The S&P 500 has hit record highs more than 50 times so far this year and has tripled from the 12-year low it reached in the depths of the financial crisis in 2009.

John Manley, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo Fund Management, said he expects that stocks are being pushed higher in part from what he calls "sleepy heads," investors who tend to put off plowing money into IRAs until the closing days of each year.

"All of sudden they wake up, and realize, 'I need to do this to get my tax deduction,'" he says.

Benchmark U.S. crude dropped $1.43 to $53.30 a barrel in New York. On Friday, the contract fell $1.11 to settle at $54.73. In metals trading, gold lost $13.40 to $1,181.90 an ounce, silver fell 37 cents to $15.78 an ounce and copper edged up less than a penny to $2.82 a pound.

The dollar rose to 120.71 yen from 120.35 Friday. The euro edged down to $1.2156 from Friday's $1.2205.

U.S. government bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.22 percent from 2.25 percent on Friday.