Investors make their way back

NEW YORK - The U.S. stock market moved quietly higher Monday as investors decided to step back into a market that was rattled by white-knuckle turbulence last week.

It was a rare move upward for a market that, for the most part, has been moving lower for the last month.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 17.25 points, or 0.91 percent, to 1,904.01 and the Nasdaq composite gained 57.64 points, or 1.35 percent, to 4,316.07.

The Dow Jones industrial average did not fare as well, and wound up essentially flat. The 30-stock index rose 19.26 points, or 0.12 percent, to 16,399.67. The main reason the Dow did not perform as well as the other two indexes was IBM.

IBM fell $12.95, or 7 percent, to $169.10 after the company reported earnings that missed Wall Street's expectations. The company also missed on revenue and warned that it might not meet its profit goals for the foreseeable future. IBM was the biggest decliner in both the Dow and in the S&P 500.

Without the effect of IBM's decline, the price-weighted blue-chip Dow would have been up 102 points.

Many market watchers expected more volatile trading in the days and weeks to come. The S&P 500 is down just 5.3 percent from its mid-September high, even with concerns about Europe and Asia. Also, the market has had four straight weeks of declines.

This is one of the busiest weeks for company earnings. A total of 130 companies in the S&P 500 index will report their quarterly results, including big names like American Express, Cola-Cola and AT&T.

U.S. government bond prices were mostly unchanged Monday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note held steady at 2.19 percent.

One symptom of the concerns over the global economy has been the sharp fall in oil prices in recent weeks. The price of oil fell slightly Monday, remaining near its lowest level since June of 2012. Benchmark U.S. crude fell four cents to close at $82.71 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, fell 76 cents to close at $85.40 on the ICE Futures exchange in London. Wholesale gasoline fell 3.3 cents to close at $2.20 a gallon.

Gold rose $5.70 to $1,244.70 an ounce. Silver rose two cents to $17.35 an ounce and copper fell two cents to $2.99 a pound.