New | Choppy session in Wall Street leads to almost flat finish

US stocks ended Tuesday virtually unchanged after a choppy trading day with investors hesitant to make bets while a sharp increase in oil prices failed to boost energy stocks.

The benchmark S&P 500 index’s best performer was the consumer staples sector, which is seen as a defensive bet because consumers still buy basics even in a downturn.

Investors are making more defensive bets because of uncertainty about what will happen in Greece and the timing for US interest rate hikes, on top of worries about a possible market correction after five years of gains, said Dennis Dick, proprietary trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

"When you start to see the defensives as your leaders it’s typically getting to the end of our cycle," he said. "When I’m seeing the market get more defensive it makes me nervous."

Crude oil prices jumped more than 3 per cent as bulls ramped up bets across the oil complex for another weekly drop in U.S. stockpiles.

Yet the S&P energy sector ended down 0.05 per cent after rising as much as 1 per cent earlier in the session.

"I think people are perceiving (the price rise) as a more short-term phenomenon. There’s some stronger and larger forces at work, such as OPEC is not changing its posture with respect to production," said Matthew Kaufler, portfolio manager at Federated Clover Investment Advisors in Rochester, New York.