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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks fluctuated between small gains and losses in a light-volume session on Tuesday, suggesting a 5 percent rally over the past four trading sessions may have largely run its course.

The S&P 500 turned positive for the year on Friday, with improving economic data helping to boost equities. The gains, which lifted the benchmark index above its 200-day moving average, were amplified by the light pre-holiday trading.

Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research.com in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, said stocks were likely to drift higher into the end of the year even if gains were slight.

"We'll probably have a slight drift upwards but there's not a lot of volume," he said. "In the absence of any bad news, we could see a drift up over the next four days."

In the latest economic data, consumer confidence rose more than expected in December, hitting an eight-month high, as Americans grew more upbeat about the labor market and their financial situations.

Sears Holdings Corp (SHLD.O) slid 20 percent to $36.73 to its lowest in nearly three years. The retailer plans to close 100 to 120 Kmart and Sears stores and said fourth-quarter earnings would fall by more than half from a year ago.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) dropped 1.74 points, or 0.01 percent, to 12,292.26. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) gained 0.28 point, or 0.02 percent, to 1,265.61. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) gained 0.09 point, or 0.00 percent, to 2,618.73.

Going into the last trading week of the year, the Dow is up 6.2 percent and the Nasdaq is down 1.3 percent. The S&P's performance is turning out to be the flattest in more than 40 years. The index is up less than 1 percent, which is its smallest move in either direction since 1970.

Equity markets often benefit from seasonal strength into the end of the year -- a phenomenon known as the "Santa Claus rally." The last five days of the year and the first two of January have produced an average 1.6 percent gain for the S&P 500 since 1969, according to the Stock Trader's Almanac.

However, investors have warned about reading too much into the year-end rally. They warn that the outlook for the year ahead is still murky with many of the same problems that dogged markets in 2011 still unresolved.

"Lest anyone get too excited, this relatively constructive outlook heading into 2012 represents only a brief reprieve from elevated equity volatility," said Jim Strugger, a derivatives strategist at MKM Partners in a note.

The outlook from Sears dragged on other retailers. JC Penney (JCP.N) shares fell 1 percent to $35.32, while Morgan Stanley's retail index edged down 0.5 percent. Stock in Sears fell to its lowest since March 2009.

U.S. single-family home prices fell slightly more than expected in October, according to S&P/Case-Shiller data, coming after better-than-expected data on the sector last week.

MetLife Inc (MET.N), the largest U.S. life insurer, will sell about $7.5 billion worth of deposits in its MetLife Bank to a General Electric Co unit (GE.N) as it looks to exit the banking business. MetLife rose 1.5 percent to $31.56 while GE was down 0.3 percent at $18.17.

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), which is lagging behind major U.S. competitors in complying with new capital rules, may sell more assets, sources said. Shares of the Dow component fell 0.7 percent to $5.56.

Mead Johnson (MJN.N) shares rose nearly 6 percent to $69 after the maker of Enfamil baby formula said its products were safe, even as U.S. health officials continue their investigation following the death of an infant. Over two days last week, the shares fell more than 15 percent.

(Reporting By Edward Krudy; editing by Kenneth Barry)

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is feeling pretty cocky one week away from the Iowa caucuses.

“The dynamics couldn’t be better for us,” an anonymous senior Romney strategist told John Heilemann in a profile of the campaign in New York Magazine. “I don’t see any scenario where we’re not the nominee.”

Heilemann writes that much has changed over the span of a month for Romney’s campaign because at “the start of December, this degree of self-assurance would have seemed not merely misplaced but a sign of mental illness.”

But if polls are any indication, it may still be a little premature for the Romney campaign to shoot off about how they’re going to clean up.

According to the Real Clear Politics average of national polls, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich still leads the field with 28 percent. He’s followed by Romney at 25 percent and Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 12 percent.

In Iowa, Paul leads at 22 percent, followed by Romney’s 21 percent and Gingrich’s 14 percent, according the RCP average of polls.

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NEW YORK – Van Halen will tour in 2012.
The rock band has posted a video on its website announcing that the first tickets will go on sale Jan. 10.
The black-and-white video shows guitarist Eddie Van Halen and drummer Alex Van Halen, along with original lead singer David Lee Roth and Eddie's son, Wolfgang, on bass. The ticker at the bottom of the video reads: "Van Halen on Tour 2012. First tickets on sale January 10."
No other information is posted on the website.
Van Halen, with its flamboyant frontman "Diamond Dave," was one of the most popular rock bands of the 1980s, but Roth left the band in 1985. Van Halen toured with him in 2007-2008.
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Online:
http://www.van-halen.com

FORT WAYNE, Ind. – A babysitter and trusted neighbor has confessed that he bludgeoned a 9-year-old Indiana girl to death with a brick then dismembered her, hiding her head, hands and feet at a home where he was staying and dumping the rest of her remains nearby, police said Tuesday.
Allen County sheriff's investigators said in an affidavit that 39-year-old Michael Plumadore admits he killed Aliahna Lemmon on Thursday.
According to the affidavit, Plumadore told police that after beating Aliahna to death on the front steps of the home in the early morning hours, he stuffed her body into trash bags and hid her in the freezer at the home in a rundown trailer park in Fort Wayne. He said he later chopped up her body with a hacksaw and stuffed her remains into freezer bags.
Police said Plumadore told them he had hidden Aliahna's head, feet and hands at the trailer and discarded her other remains at a nearby business. Police obtained a warrant to search the trailer on Monday and found the body parts.
Authorities didn't say Tuesday why Plumadore killed the child, but Sheriff Ken Fries said investigators suspected Plumadore was involved since soon after she was reported missing Friday night.
Investigators questioned him Friday and Saturday and he was arrested Monday after being interviewed by detectives for several hours more.
Fries said his long police career told him that Plumadore's account of the girl's disappearance had too many inconsistencies.
"Things that were said in 29 years of doing this that just didn't make sense," Fries said during a Tuesday news conference. "We needed to get him to talk."
Fries said Plumadore was "factual" in talking with investigators, but he wouldn't describe Plumadore's demeanor.
A judge ordered Plumadore held without bail or bond at an initial hearing Tuesday, sheriff's department spokesman Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel said. He has yet to be formally charged in Aliahna's death.
Mike McAlexander, the Allen County chief deputy prosecutor, wouldn't say whether anyone else was suspected of being involved and said "nothing has been ruled out."
Aliahna and her two younger sisters were staying with Plumadore for about one week because their mother, Tarah Souders, had been sick with the flu.
Plumadore told The Journal Gazette on Sunday that Aliahna disappeared from the home Friday morning while he was sleeping after having gone to a gas station about a mile away to buy a cigar. Authorities have said the store's surveillance video shows him there about that time.
Aliahna wasn't reported missing until Friday night. Plumadore said the younger girls told him their mother had picked her up and he didn't realize until hours later that this wasn't true.
On Saturday, more than 100 emergency workers searched for Aliahna around the trailer park on the city's north side where Aliahna and Plumadore lived. FBI agents were there Monday.
A state website shows that 15 registered sex offenders live in the park that numbers about two dozen homes. Plumadore is not on Indiana's registered sex offenders list. He has a criminal record in Florida and North Carolina that includes convictions for trespassing and assault.
Aliahna's step-grandfather, David Story, told The Associated Press that Plumadore had cared for Souders' ailing father until his death from emphysema early this month and was living in that man's mobile home.
"He was a trusted family friend," Story said late Monday, saying he was surprised by the arrest.

Richard Patee, 58, whose trailer is next to where Plumadore was living, said he didn't think it was odd that Aliahna's mother had him watching the girls for an extended period.

"They had known each other for somewhere of three to four years, I know that, and he took care of their grandfather," Patee said. "I didn't see any reason to question it at all. I talked with Mike on and off for the past two-and-a-half years and he never had a cross word."

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Associated Press Writer Tom Coyne contributed to this story from Fort Wayne.

A world-traveling sea turtle found stranded in the Netherlands is back home in the Gulf of Mexico today (Dec. 27) after three long years of rest and rehabilitation.

The animal, an endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle, was found frigid and near-dead off the coast of the Netherlands in 2008, thousands of miles from the Gulf waters these turtles call home. It was dubbed Johnny Vasco de Gama by its European rescuers.

Marine biologists suspect Johnny became caught in cold currents and was "cold-stunned," a condition that shuts down internal organs and can kill sea turtles. Staff members of the Rotterdam Zoo stabilized the ailing turtle and sent him to the Oceanário de Lisboa aquarium in Portugal the following summer.

After rehabilitation there, Johnny flew in a specially adapted plane back across the Atlantic to Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida. Today scientists there released the well-traveled turtle back into the sea.

"He did just fine," Mote spokesman Hayley Rutger told LiveScience.

Johnny is fitted with a satellite tag that will help researchers keep an eye on his next amazing journey. Mote has tracked more than 120 sea turtles since 2005, according to Tony Tucker, the head of the laboratory's Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Program.

"By tracking Johnny, we'll obtain a rare look at how rehabbed turtles reorient in the wild," Tucker said in a statement. "Fortunately, we can compare this turtle to other wild Kemp's ridleys being tracked currently by Mote and other institutions around the Gulf."

Those interested in following Johnny can visit seaturtle.org/tracking to keep up with him as well as a handful of other roaming sea turtles.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.


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