Dow Quietly Near High on Seasonal Buying

Stocks advanced in a sedate session Thursday, leaving the Dow Jones industrial average just shy of its all-time high, as investors added the market’s best performers to their portfolios ahead of year’s end.

The Dow closed up 23.83 points at 6,546.68, just 1.11 point below its all-time closing high of 6,547.79 on Nov. 25.

The Dow gained as much as 40 points in morning trading but trimmed its advance nearly in half in the afternoon.

Traders and analysts said the rise was typical of year-end activity.

“We’re right in the midst of the traditional folkloric Santa Claus rally,” said Robert Stovall, president of Stovall/Twenty-First Advisers.

“Even though everybody feels somewhat nervous about the [market’s high] level,” said Tom Gallagher, the senior stock trader at Oppenheimer & Co., “it doesn’t seem to run into any selling at all.”

Stocks got little help from the bond market, which held steady, leaving the 30-year Treasury bond yield at 6.58%. Instead, stocks moved broadly higher under their own steam.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by nearly 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange in slow post-holiday trading. Markets were closed Wednesday.

Broad-market indexes were higher but also finished short of their all-time closing highs. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 4.79 points to 755.82, and the NYSE’s composite index climbed 2.07 points to 397.07.

The Nasdaq composite index added 6.94 points to 1,294.57, and the American Stock Exchange’s market value index closed up 1.48 at 582.83.

Among Thursday’s highlights:

* AT&T; added 1 5/8 to 43, the biggest gainer among the Dow industrials, after federal regulators on Tuesday moved to allow local carriers to keep levying access charges to long-distance providers for the time being. Such fees total about $30 billion a year.

Other phone companies also gained. SBC Communications was up 1 3/8 to 53 5/8, BellSouth added 1 to 40 7/8, Ameritech added 1 1/8 to 60 5/8, Bell Atlantic climbed 1 3/8 to 65, and Nynex gained 1 to 48 3/4.

* Technology shares helped boost the broad market: Linear Technology, up 2 to 44 1/2, Motorola, up 2 7/8 at 63 1/4, Netscape Communications, up 2 7/8 at 55 7/8.

3Com rose 1 1/2 to 77 5/8, Cisco Systems gained 1 5/8 at 66 5/8 and Oracle increased 13/16 at 44 1/16.

* Bank stocks rallied amid stable interest rates. Citicorp gained 1 3/8 to 106 5/8, SunTrust Bank rose 1 to 51 3/4 and Banc One rose 5/8 to 45.

Eldorado Bancorp jumped 1 7/8 to 22 1/4 after the Orange County bank agreed to be taken over by privately held Commerce Security Bancorp for $90 million.

* General Electric rose 1 1/4 to 103 1/4 after confirming it was not in talks to buy American Express, which lost 2 3/4 at 56 7/8.

In other stock markets, Tokyo’s Nikkei index tumbled 1.32% on renewed worries about Japan’s soft economy and about the U.S. dollar’s advance to a 3 1/2-year high to 114.66 yen.

Although it later recovered, the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s main index fell below 19,000 for the first time since December 1995; it ended down 257.83 points at 19,291.58.

The Frankfurt and London exchanges were closed.