By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 was in a holding pattern Tuesday, as the recent melt-up in growth stocks took a breather, but gains in cyclical sectors including energy kept downside momentum in check.

The Nasdaq dropped 0.1% after rising 0.1%.

The market’s growth corners like tech were slightly slowed by Apple and Microsoft. As investors awaited the report of tech heavyweights Alphabet parent Google on the next quarter, they were somewhat disappointed.

Ahead of the results from Alphabet (NASDAQ:), some on Wall Street flagged reason for caution, citing concerns about the impact of Apple’s privacy changes.

“While investors remain relatively bullish on GOOGL heading into the print, our view is a bit more cautious on two fronts given our ad checks and spots of investor checks having detected YouTube ATT/IDFA headwinds,” RBC said in a note.

Facebook (NASDAQ 🙂 and Amazon(NASDAQ :), both of which released earnings reports on Tuesday and Thursday, were also higher. 

Markets are supported by value stocks such as energy, industrials, and materials. The market is led by energy which leads the way. This was supported with a rise in energy giant shares. Exxon Mobil (NYSE:).

Exxon posted mixed results for the fourth quarter, with revenue falling short. But, Exxon also announced a new $10 Billion stock buyback program. This sent Exxon shares higher by more than 6%.

United Parcel Service (NYSE: ) posted better-than-expected quarterly results. It was also more optimistic, which sent its shares up by over 13%.

In deal activity, AT&T (NYSE:) detailed plans to spin off its WarnerMedia business to Discovery (NASDAQ:) in a $43 billion deal.

However, the telecoms company also announced a reduction of its dividend to $1.11 per shares, from $2.08 per shared, as well as reducing it at the lower end in previously disclosed range. The shares fell 4%.

New York Times (NYSE) said that it was buying viral game Wordle, for an undisclosed price. Shares rose by more than 3%.

The economic outlook was mixed. U.S. manufacturing activity slowing, although less so than anticipated.

 for January showed a decline to 57.6, and deeper dive into the data pointing to easing supply chain problems, though at a modest pace.

An increase in manufacturing activity, which is about 12% of America’s economy, indicates a reading higher than 50 on the ISM Index.

“The data suggest marginal progress in the fight to rebuild inventories and work through order backlogs […] but the magnitude of the changes in these indexes was quite small,” Jefferies said.

“There is still plenty of evidence that supply chain problems persist.”