NEW YORK-Wall Street edged low­er yes­ter­day af­ter a qui­et trad­ing day that left the in­dex­es lit­tle changed. The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age closed down 45.57 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 13,124.62. It had been up 20 short­ly af­ter the open­ing bell. The Dow had its biggest loss in two weeks on Tues­day, falling 68.94 points.

The Stan­dard & Poor's 500 in­dex closed down 2.63 points, or 0.2 per­cent, at 1,402.89. The Nas­daq com­pos­ite av­er­age closed up 1.17 at 3,075.32. The yield on the ten-year Trea­sury note fell to 2.3 per cent from 2.36 per cent late Tues­day. Gold and crude oil prices rose slight­ly. Stocks closed low­er on Tues­day af­ter two re­ports sig­naled an eco­nom­ic slow­down in Chi­na. Su­per­charged growth in Chi­na over the past three years has helped sus­tain the glob­al eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery. The Dow had its biggest loss since March 6.

The Dow is still up 1.3 per cent this month and 7.4 per cent so far this year. Oth­er in­dex­es are up even more for the year: The S&P 500 has gained 11.6 per cent; the tech­nol­o­gy-fo­cused Nas­daq com­pos­ite 18.1 per cent.

AP