Stocks pull back

NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street has ended a relatively calm day with a moderate decline, with the Dow Jones industrials falling about 76 points as profit-taking set in after Monday's massive advance.

It's the first time in nine sessions that the Dow hasn't closed up or down in triple digits.

After some early gyrations, stock prices fluctuated during the day, but the Dow and the Standard & Poor's 500 index were often in the plus column. Investors were optimistic about the government's plans to spend $250 billion to buy stock in private banks, but they also decided to collect profits from the surge that sent the Dow up 936 points.

The Dow closed at 9,310 level after being up more than 400 and down more than 300. The Nasdaq composite index showed a sharper decline, falling more than 3% to the Dow's pullback of under 1%, as investors gravitated toward stocks they believed would benefit most from the government's financial sector plans.