The Dow Jones industrial average was flat at 15,570. The Nasdaq composite was up a point at 3,944. Third-quarter earnings are expected to rise by about 4.5 percent for S&P 500 companies, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. While that is the slowest rate of growth in a year, companies are still beating the estimates of Wall Street analysts. About two thirds of the companies that have published third-quarter earnings so far have exceeded analysts' expectations. "The reason we can continue to go higher is because we are beating muted expectations," said JJ Kinahan, an analyst at TDAmeritrade. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note was unchanged at 2.51 percent. In commodities trading, the price of gold rose $2 to $1,354 an ounce. Oil was little changed at $98 a barrel in New York. Among stocks making big moves: — Merck fell $1.23, or 2.6 percent, to $45.31 after the company sharply lowered its earnings forecast for the full year. Third-quarter profit plunged 35 percent because of competition from generic drugmakers. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.