REFILE-US STOCKS-Wall Street bides its time, awaiting news from trade front

(Fixes typo in first sentence.)
* Nike rises on Goldman Sachs upgrade
* Kroger drops following earnings miss
* Sage sinks as depression drug fails trial
* Indexes: Dow up 0.03%, S&P 500 up 0.05%, Nasdaq off 0.03%

By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Wall Street was largely
unchanged on Thursday as market participants stayed on the
sidelines, awaiting further developments in the hoped-for
interim trade deal between the United States and China.
The S&P 500 .SPX and the Dow .DJI were slightly higher
and the Nasdaq .IXIC nominally lower, their losses held in
check by a rise in tech stocks.
Markets have been whipsawed in recent days as conflicting
reports on whether the world's two largest economies would be
able to arrive at a "phase one" agreement prior to Dec. 15, when
a new round of tariffs on Chinese imports is scheduled to take
effect. "We're on hold until we see what happens on the trade
front," said Chuck Carlson, chief executive officer at Horizon
Investment Services in Hammond, Indiana. "People are trying to
get a read on what's going to happen with the trade talks and
the next relevant deadline is Dec 15."
Market participants appeared to show little heed to the
drama unfolding in Washington as the U.S. House of
Representatives prepared to draft articles of impeachment
against President Donald Trump. "What impacts investor psychology is uncertainty, and I
don't think there's any uncertainty as to how (the impeachment
proceedings) will play out," Carlson added.
"At the end of the day, whether there's an impeachment or
not isn't going to stop a money manager from deciding whether or
not he'll by Intel INTC.O ."
The articles of impeachment stem from a July 25 phone call
in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to
carry out two investigations that would benefit him politically.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 17.89 points,
or 0.06%, to 27,667.67, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 2.02 points,
or 0.06%, to 3,114.78 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped
0.35 points, or -0%, to 8,566.32.
Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500 seven were trading in
the red.
Materials stocks .SPLRCM were the biggest winners, while
consumer staples .SPLRCS suffered the largest percentage drop.
Nike Inc NKE.N gained 1.8% following Goldman Sachs'
upgrade of the sportswear maker's stock to "buy" from "neutral."
Kroger Co KR.N shares fell 3.5% after the supermarket
chain missed Wall Street earnings estimates, hurt by stiff
competition from Walmart Inc WMT.N and Amazon.com Inc
AMZN.O . Online craft retailer Etsy ETSY.O dipped 2.7% on the heels
of a downgrade to "underweight" by Morgan Stanley. SecureWorks Corp SCWX.O jumped 22.8%, on course for its
best day ever, after the cyber security firm posted a surprise
third-quarter profit. Sage Therapeutics Inc SAGE.O tumbled 59.1% after its
depression drug failed in a late-stage study. On the economic front, a shrinking trade deficit, a drop in
jobless claims and a rebound in factory orders suggested a
still-robust, if slowing, U.S. economy. Investors now look to Friday's employment report from the
U.S. Labor Department, which is expected to show an increase of
180,000 nonfarm payrolls in November.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
1.02-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.02-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 11 new 52-week highs and 3 new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 46 new highs and 53 new lows.