The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 4 points to 11666, one day after closing at a 28-month high.

The Nasdaq Composite edged down less than one point to 2691. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 0.2% to 1269.

Weighing on the S&P 500, food retailers lagged after BMO Capital Markets downgraded Safeway, Vitamin Shoppe, and Whole Foods to marketperform from outperform, noting limited upside. Shares of Safeway fell 4.6%, Vitamin Shoppe was off 3.4% and Whole Foods shed 2.9%. BMO also reduced its estimates for Supervalu, noting the chain's inability to drive traffic, and Kroger, saying the fiscal year 2011 consensus could be too high given the challenging environment. Supervalu tumbled 8.2, while Kroger lost 1.6%.

However, the market pared steeper earlier declines after the Commerce Department reported that U.S. factory goods orders unexpectedly rose in November 0.7%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 0.1% decline.

Also helping to keep the market's losses in check, technology companies rose, led by a 2.8% climb in Advanced Micro Devices after the company said it is launching its new Fusion chip at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Rival Intel will be announcing a similar chip of its own at the show. Shares of Intel rose 1%.

Later in the session, traders will be focused on the wording of the U.S. Federal Reserve's minutes from its latest meeting, which will be released at 2 p.m. EST.

European stocks traded largely higher as the euro was boosted by data showing the U.K.'s manufacturing sector expanded at the fastest rate for more than 16 years in December. Also helping lift sentiment in Europe, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang said China supports Spain's economic reforms and will continue buying Spanish government debt, the Chinese official wrote in an editorial in El Pais, a Spanish newspaper.

Cleanup, government fines, lawsuits, legal fees and damage claims will likely exceed the $40 billion that BP has publicly estimated, according to an Associated Press analysis. But they'll be far below the highest estimates made over the summer by legal experts and prominent Wall Street banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which said costs could near $200 billion.

BP will survive the worst oil spill in U.S. history for several key reasons: it has little debt; its global businesses are forecast to generate $26 billion next year in cash flow from operations; the environmental impact of the spill isn't as bad as feared; and the government seems unlikely to ban BP from Gulf drilling. To bolster its finances, BP has cut its dividend, issued debt and sold more than $21 billion in assets.

"It could have been a lot worse," says Tyler Priest, a University of Houston petroleum historian who serves on President Obama's oil spill investigation committee. "BP is going to come back from this."

Many influential investors appear to agree. According to Thomson Reuters, 23 firms with $1 billion or more invested in the stock market, including BlackRock Investment Management, Managed Account Advisors and Rydex Security Global Investors, more than doubled their holdings of BP stock from July through September.

A California woman is under arrest as part of a federal crackdown on people working at financial research firms who illegally feed inside information to investors.

Winifred Jiau is scheduled to appear Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco.

Manhattan prosecutors say the 43-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday at her home in Fremont, Calif.

She is charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Authorities say she gave two portfolio managers at separate hedge funds information about upcoming earnings reports for Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and Nvidia Corp.

The government said she was paid more than $200,000 for early information about the two technology companies.

Facebook likes big numbers - it now has more than 500 million users, each one of whom can have as many as 5,000 friends. Yet as a privately held company, its ownership base must remain small, or it will have to disclose publicly its financial results.

A surging shadow market in the privately held shares of Facebook is making such restraint difficult and could spur the company to go public - even as its executives try to tamp down speculation about an initial public offering - much as similar pressure helped push Microsoft and Google toward their own initial public offerings.

The frenzied trading in Facebook, as well as in Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn, has caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York Times DealBook first reported on Tuesday that the agency had asked for information about trading in all four companies.

While it is unclear what exactly the S.E.C. is focusing on, legal experts say that one clear area of inquiry relates to a federal law that establishes a limit for private companies of fewer than 500 shareholders. Once a company has 500 shareholders, it must register its private shares with the S.E.C. and publicly disclose its financial results.

Facebook is well aware of this issue. In 2008, the S.E.C. allowed Facebook to issue restricted stock to employees without having to register the securities, a move that would have required the company to publicly disclose financial information.

Alcatel-Lucent SA has agreed to pay more than $137 million to settle charges brought against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.

The SEC late Monday accused the Paris-based telecommunications company of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to foreign government officials to illicitly win business in Latin America and Asia.

Alcatel, a top supplier to U.S. and European phone companies, agreed to pay more than $45 million to settle the SEC's charges. It will pay an additional $92 million to settle criminal charges announced by the Justice Department.

A representative for Alcatel couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The SEC's complaint said Alcatel's bribes went to government officials in Costa Rica, Honduras, Malaysia and Taiwan between December 2001 and June 2006.

The SEC complaint said all of the bribery payments were undocumented or improperly recorded as consulting fees by Alcatel subsidiaries and then consolidated into the company's financial statements. The complaint also says leaders of several Alcatel subsidiaries and geographical regions either knew or were severely reckless in not knowing about the misconduct.