NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks drifted to a mixed finish on Wednesday, though the modest moves for indexes masked some thrashing underneath the surface. Target lost more than a fifth of its value after the retailer gave a dour forecast for the holiday shopping season.

The S&P 500 finished the day virtually unchanged after coming back from a loss of 1% during the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a gain of 139 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1%.

Target’s 21.4% tumble followed its report showing weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The retailer also gave a forecast for profit in the upcoming holiday season that was below analysts’ estimates.

Target’s performance stood in stark contrast to rival Walmart, which reported another quarter of stellar sales Tuesday and released optimistic projections for the holiday season.

Hints about how U.S. consumers are doing are under particular scrutiny, given that they’ll need to keep spending if the U.S. economy is to continue growing and avoid a recession. Shoppers are contending with high prices across the economy and still-high interest rates.

“I find the Target and Walmart earnings very interesting because we typically see a waterfall type effect when the economy begins to struggle, with shoppers trading down from stores such as Target to Walmart,” said JJ Kinahan, CEO of IG North America. “I’m not entirely sure if the move to Walmart is simply a matter of shoppers finding more items they like at Walmart or if this is a potentially concerning economic sign.”

Besides Target, several lower-priced retailers were among the biggest losers in the S&P 500. Dollar General fell 4.2%, and Dollar Tree sank 2.6%.

On the winning end of Wall Street was Williams-Sonoma, which jumped 27.5% after the home retailer delivered better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The parent of Pottery Barn also said it expects overall sales to fall by less this fiscal year than it had earlier forecast.

Comcast rose 1.6% after announcing the spinoff of USA, CNBC, MSNBC and other cable television networks into a standalone company that will have its own stock trading on the market.

All told, the S&P 500 inched up by 0.13, or less than 0.1%, to 5,917.11. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 139.53 points to 43,408.47, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 21.32 to 18,966.14.

The headliner of the day, week and perhaps the rest of the year for Wall Street arrived after trading ended for the day. That’s when superstar stock Nvidia unveiled its results for the latest quarter.