US close: Major indices little changed at end of session

Wall Street stocks ended the session much the same as they started them on Tuesday.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.04% at 35,756.88, while the S&P 500 was 0.18% firmer at 4,574.79 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.06% stronger at 15,235.71.

The Dow closed 15.73 points higher on Tuesday, building on record-setting gains registered by the index in the previous session.

Facebook shares were in the red after the social media behemoth posting earnings that topped expectations on the Street but fell short on both revenue and monthly active users, while UPS traded higher on the back of strong beats on profit and revenue across all segments and 3M stock advanced after beating earnings on the top and bottom lines.

Hasbro reported strong revenue, operating profit and earnings growth, and Eli Lilly boosted full-year guidance despite reporting a drop in profits during the third quarter of its trading year.

After the close, Alphabet posted better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue figures, Twitter said Apple privacy changes had made less of an impact on third-quarter earnings than initially expected, and Microsoft beat on revenues thanks to strong demand for its consumption-based cloud services.

On the macro front, S&P/Case-Shiller's house price index showed that prices increased 19.84% year-on-year in August, marginally ahead of July's 19.75% clip for the biggest gain on record.

Elsewhere, new home sales surged in September, up 14% versus the 1.5% increase expected by economists, according to the Commerce Department.

Lastly, the Conference Board's consumer confidence index rose to 113.8 in October from an upwardly revised print of 109.8 for the previous month as concerns regarding the Covid-19 delta variant seemed to ease somewhat.