US STOCKS-Wall Street little changed as cyclicals shine, big tech falls

* Applied Materials, Catepillar hit record highs
* More rotation out of big tech into cyclicals
* Financial, material, energy, industrial sectors gain

(Adds 4 p.m. close)
By Herbert Lash
NEW YORK, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Stocks on Wall Street were
steady 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 surge in Deere & Co DE.N and Caterpillar's
CAT.N gain to an all-time peak. Financials .SPSY , materials
.SPLRCM and energy .SPNY , along with industrials, rose more
than 1%.
The S&P 1500 airlines index .SPCOMAIR also soared, 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. Apple Inc
AAPL.O and Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O also fell, as investors
sold the leaders in the big rally since last March.
Value stocks .RLV rose while growth .RLG fell.
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."
Unofficially, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose
2.36 points, or 0.01%, to 31,495.7, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 7.18
points, or 0.18%, to 3,906.79 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC
added 8.81 points, or 0.06%, to 13,874.17.
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 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 headed
toward 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.
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.
Meanwhile, 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 after it forecast second-quarter
revenue above market expectations. Demand for its semiconductor
manufacturing tools has picked up during a global shortage of
semiconductors.