REFILE-US STOCKS-Wall Street closes flat as cyclicals shine, big tech falls

(Fixes typographical error in headline)
* Applied Materials, Catepillar hit record highs
* More rotation out of big tech into cyclicals
* Financial, material, energy, industrial sectors gain

By Herbert Lash
NEW YORK, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Stocks on Wall Street closed
near break-even on Friday as investors sold technology shares
that have rallied through the pandemic and rotated into cyclical
stocks set to benefit from pent-up demand once the coronavirus
pandemic is subdued.
Industrials .SPLRCI led rising sectors in the S&P 500,
spurred by a 9.9% surge in Deere & Co DE.N and Caterpillar's
CAT.N 5.0% gain to an all-time peak of $211.40 a share.
Financials .SPSY , materials .SPLRCM and energy .SPNY ,
along with industrials, rose more than 1%.
The S&P 1500 airlines index .SPCOMAIR jumped 3.5%, with
post-pandemic travel in focus.
The stay-at-home winners, including Microsoft Corp MSFT.O ,
Facebook Inc FB.O , Alphabet's Google GOOGL.O and Netflix Inc
NFLX.O , fell in a trend seen for most of the week. Amazon.com
Inc AMZN.O also fell, as investors sold the leaders in the big
rally since last March.
Value stocks .RLV rose 0.6% while growth .RLG fell 0.6%.
Advancing stocks led declining shares by about a 2:1 ratio.
A battle continues between tech-led growth stocks and
cyclicals, companies that are heavily affected by economic
conditions, said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at
Inverness Counsel in New York.
"When the economy is roaring, they're roaring. When the
economy is weakening, they're weakening," Ghriskey said of
cyclicals. "The economy will roar, at least for a period of
time. There's huge pent-up demand, whether just for travel or
going back to work."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI edged up 0.98
points, or 0%, to 31,494.32 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC
added 9.11 points, or 0.07%, to 13,874.46. The S&P 500 .SPX
dropped 7.26 points, or 0.19%, to 3,906.71.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 13.47 billion shares.
Strong earnings, progress in vaccination rollouts and hopes
of a $1.9 trillion federal coronavirus relief package helped
U.S. stock indexes hit record highs at the start of the week.
The Dow hit an all-time intraday peak, led by Caterpillar,
after Deere raised its 2021 earnings forecast. Deere reported
profit more than doubled in the first quarter on rising demand
for farm and construction machinery. The benchmark S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq posted their
first weekly declines this month on concerns over higher stock
market valuations, and expectations of rising inflation led to
fears of a short-term pullback in equities.
For the week, the Dow rose 0.1% while the S&P 500 fell 0.7%
and the Nasdaq slid 1.6% as big tech sold off.
Bank of America expects a more than 10% pullback in stocks,
which are trading at more than 22 times 12-month forward
earnings, the most expensive since the dot-com bubble of the
late 1990s. "What we saw (this week) represents a market that is tired
and may not do very much. So we are headed for some sort of a
pullback, but I don't think we're there just yet," said Peter
Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities
in New York.
On the economic front, data showed IHS Markit's flash U.S.
composite PMI, which tracks the manufacturing and services
sectors, inched up to 58.8 in February. Applied Materials Inc AMAT.O was among the top boosts to
both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, rising 5.3% to $119.46, after
it forecast second-quarter revenue above market expectations.
Demand for its semiconductor manufacturing tools has picked up
during a global shortage of semiconductors. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
1.87-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.14-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 51 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 223 new highs and nine new lows.