With little economic news for investors to digest, the markets traded lower during the midday with the Dow losing 26 points to 13,966. Nasdaq slipped 4 points to 3188.
On the upside
Bargain hunters lifted shares of SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWR), whose stock price fell on Friday after forecasting flat revenue for 2013.
Shares of LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) continued rising after reporting sharply higher fourth quarter earnings and revenue last week.
BlackRock acquired a 7.85% stake in Diamond Foods (Nasdaq: DMND).
On the downside
A Seeking Alpha contributor wrote that Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR) was over leveraged and questioned its long term viability.
The Food and Drug Administration rejected Novo Nordisk's (NYSE: NVO) insulin products Tresiba and Ryzodeg.
Wedbush downgraded Heckmann (NYSE: HEK) to an Underperform rating and cut its price target to $2.50 from $3.00.
In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of more than 5 to 3 on the NYSE and by 9 to 7 on Nasdaq. The broader S&P 500 index eased a point to 1516.
