Stocks mixed in early trading

Stocks were mixed in early trading Friday as traders and investors lacked a catalyst to push the major indexes higher.

Ross Stores was the biggest decliner after the company said that it anticipates intense competition and discounting this holiday shopping season. Time Warner Cable was among the biggest gainers in the Standard & Poor's 500 index after the Wall Street Journal reported Charter Communications was nearing a bid for the company.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped seven points, or 0.1 percent, to 16,001 in early trading, The S&P 500 index rose one points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,796. The Nasdaq composite gained 11 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,980.

The Dow Jones industrial average finished above 16,000 for the first time Thursday, pushing the blue-chip index toward its best performance in a decade. The stock market has been on fire this year, propelled higher by a combination of solid corporate earnings, a steadily strengthening economy and easy-money policies from the Federal Reserve.

"At this point valuations are not expensive enough to say `don't buy any more'," said Andres Garcia-Amaya, a global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds. "I'm not pounding the table anymore saying this is the cheapest U.S. equity market in decades."

The price-earnings ratio of S&P 500 companies, a measure of how much investors are willing to pay for a stock in relation to a company's earnings, has climbed to 14.9 from 12.6 at the start of the year.

In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.77 percent from 2.79 percent on Thursday.

In commodities trading, the price of oil dropped $1.16, or 1,25 percent, to $94.26 a barrel. Gold gained $2, or 0.2 percent, to $1,245.50 an ounce.

Among other stocks making big moves;

-- Foot Locker rose $1.86, or 5.2 percent, to $38.72 after the company reported earnings that beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts.

-- BioGen jumped $27.38, or 10.8 percent, to $279 after reports that it had won regulatory protection from its top-selling multiple sclerosis drug in Europe.