US stocks ease for second day after record run

US stocks fell for a second day Wednesday after a run that saw new Dow and S&P records and a 15-year high for the Nasdaq.
Dull data on private business hiring and service sector growth, and a so-so Beige Book economic survey from the Federal Reserve kept traders cautious, with eyes now on Friday's official jobs market report for February, and the European Central Bank meeting Thursday.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 106.47 points (0.58 percent) at 18,096.90.
The broad-based S&P 500 fell 9.25 (0.44 percent) to 2,098.53, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite dropped 12.76 (0.26 percent) to 4,967.14.
Bill Lynch of Hinsdale Associates said the market may have gotten a bit of vertigo after the heights hits on Monday, with the S&P 500 reaching 2,119 and the Nasdaq topping 5,000.
"There may be some wariness about what the ECB may tell tomorrow," he added.
Fashion chain Abercrombie & Fitch plunged 15.5 percent after missing sales expectations in the most recent quarter, with total sales off 14 percent and same-store sales falling 10 percent.
ExxonMobil was off 0.5 percent after announcing a $4.5 billion cut in investment spending for this year due to the plunge in oil prices.
Spending would hold at $34 billion a year through 2017, the Dow member said, as it based its planning on a projected price for Brent crude of around $55 a barrel.
Shares of Voya Financial, the insurer and retirement firm previously known as ING US, gained 0.5 percent at $44.30 after former parent ING Group was able to place a block of 32 million shares it is divesting with underwriters at $44.20 a share.
Among leading Dow losers, Caterpillar was down 1.3 percent and AT&T fell 1.2 percent.
Alibaba jumped 4.8 percent on news of its data center challenge to Amazon. The company's Aliyun unit, which already competes with Amazon Web Services in China, will offer cloud services from the new Silicon Valley installation. Amazon lost 0.5 percent.
Bond prices were unchanged. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury held at 2.12 percent, while the 30-year was 2.71 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.