The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index fell on Wednesday as better-than-expected earnings from Caterpillar Inc. and Intel Corp., were offset by a jump in a key inflationary gauge. Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar reported higher first-quarter results amid increased demand and higher prices. Caterpillar was up nearly 5 percent at $89.03. Shares of communications technology company Avaya Inc. plunged 21.4 percent to $8.40. The company, whose technology is used to help companies send phone calls over the Web, posted lower quarterly earnings and said it does not expect to meet its previous revenue forecast for fiscal 2005. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.44 points, or 0.00 percent, at 10,126.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 3.35 points, or 0.29 percent, at 1,149.43. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index was up 2.54 points, or 0.13 percent, at 1,934.90. Intel Corp., which reported a 25 percent rise in quarterly profit after the bell on Tuesday at the top end of analysts' expectations, climbed 3.8 percent to $23.49. Before the open, the consumer price index, a gauge of inflation, came in higher than expected. CPI was up 0.6 percent last month -- the sharpest monthly gain since last October. More worrisome, the so-called core rate that strips out volatile food and energy costs accelerated more-than-expected to a 0.4 percent increase in March. Economists had expected a 0.2 percent rise. --More 1802 Local Time 1502 GMT
