Dow up 32.9
to another record

NEW YORK -- Prices were mixed on Wall Street today as investors again sold technology stocks but bought financial issues in response to a drop in interest rates. The Dow Jones industrial average reached its third straight record high close.

The Dow closed up 32.93 points at 10,878.38 leaving the blue-chip index up 18.58 percent so far this year.

The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 8.08 to 1,342.83, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index dropped 21.93 to 2,528.44.

The S&P 500 is up 9.24 percent in 1999 while the Nasdaq is 15.3 percent higher.

Advancers beat decliners by a 5-to-4 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,647 up, 1,301 down and 561 unchanged. NYSE volume totaled 968.93 million shares vs. 895.47 million yesterday.

The NYSE composite index fell 2.23 to 638.09, but the American Stock Exchange composite index rose 1.31 to 779.00. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 0.68 to 432.85.

Thirty-year Treasury bond prices rose 27/32 point, or $8.44 per $1,000 bond, the biggest gain in more than three weeks. The yield was at 5.52 percent, down from late yesterday's 5.54 percent, after the Labor Department reported that wages and benefits for American workers rose a moderate 0.4 percent in the first quarter, half of what analysts had expected.

The first-quarter gain in the department's Employment Cost Index followed a much larger 0.7 percent advance from October through December of last year. The department also reported that new claims for unemployment benefits declined last week.