US equities muted ahead of earnings US equities held steady in early morning activity on Tuesday, after having their second-largest fall of the year on Monday, as investors await the start of the earnings season after the closing bell. The S&P 500 edged fractionally higher to 1,382.63 after dropping 1.1 per cent on Monday to its lowest level in nearly a month. Markets appeared to suffer setback due to a worse than expected jobs report last Friday, which suggested that the pace of economic recovery in the US continues to be uneven. Aluminium manufacturer Alcoa will kick off a string of quarterly earnings reports later in the afternoon with many analysts predicting that profits will fall in most sectors. Shares in Alcoa, which have risen nearly 10 per cent in the year to date, fell 0.3 per cent to $9.57 in early trading. Elsewhere, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1 per cent to 12,917.78 while the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.2 per cent to 3,054.23. Shares in Microsoft , which purchased 800 patents from AOL on Monday for $1bn, rose 0.1 per cent to $31.13. Analysts at Nomura said they were "bullish" on the company's prospects for the coming years as it prepares to launch new products including an updated operating system, Windows 8, in October. AOL shares moved 0.2 per cent lower to $26.36 after rising more than 40 per cent following the sale of the patents on Monday. Best Buy , the consumer-electronics retailer, rose as much as 4 per cent in morning trading on news that its chief executive Brian Dunn would resign. The early spike for the company, which recently announced that it would close 50 big box stores this year and cut 400 jobs in order to save $800m over the next three years, was shortlived. Shares in Best Buy remained flat at $22.50. Sony , the Japanese-listed electronics company, saw its New York Stock Exchange American Depositary Receipt fall more than 7 per cent to $18.67. The company, which said on Monday it would cut 10,000 employees due to falling sales, warned on Tuesday that it would report a net loss of Y520bn in its just-ended financial year. Bank of America , which has retreated from the $10 threshold it broke in March, was the biggest gainer among the big banks in early activity. Shares in the company were up 1.6 per cent to just above $9 after having fallen 7 per cent since the signs of a third round of quantitative easing diminished last week.